Lyrics

Epics and Empires,
Empires and Epics  
Life’s like a poem,
Ever read it? It’s epic.
Sometimes a poem 
Defines a whole epoch  
Epics and Empires,
Empires and Epics.

You ever heard a tale and said, Mmm, that was epic  
Mmm, what an ending – Mmm, how they said it  
Spread it on Reddit, make sure everybody gets it  
It’s perennially relevant, it’s everything – epic!

But what’s ‘epic’? – It’s from an Ancient Greek 
Word, epos — a form of oral-poetical speech 
Made to tell us of our origin and history — the deeds
Of the deathless gods, and of us human beings.

But what’s that got to do with you and me? 
What’s the price of rent and booze got to do with Hercules?
Well you see, embedded in the epics of the Ancients 
Are the fate of Empires, and entire civilizations.

For woven in the lines  
Of the poets that speak 
Are the intricate designs
Of the powers that be  
As they rise and decline 
And redefine their defeats,
You gotta read between the lines
For your mind to be free.

Epics and Empires,
Empires and Epics  
Who wrote it? Who said it? 
Who commissioned it? Who read it?
Epics and Empires,
Empires and Epics  
The myths of the past
Spin the facts of the present.

You ever read the Epic of Gilgamesh? 
The King of Uruk, who built it up, and oppressed
His own people, good and evil — an ambiguous look:
The OG antihero of the earliest book.

But its influence spread like the catchiest hook
Beyond Babylon, catching on in every nook
And if you read your other epics from the region then you’re liable
There to find it in the Iliad, and even in the Bible.

It’s an epic! 
Did I read this right?
David slayed the Jebusites  
Swift Achilles needs his prize  
Everything I seize is mine! 
I’m a king – endowed by my author
With a right to kill, and a will to conquer.

When in Rome – or wherever – read Vergil:
A Roman epic poet who earned an eternal 
Renown in expounding the name and reputation
Of his emperor and patron on an epic foundation:

The Greeks sacked Troy,
Venus said, ‘Ahoy,
We need to save Aeneas,
Cuz he’s my boy – 
From his seed in Italy
Will spring a mighty nation…’
(The guy for whom he’s writing this
Will be its culmination).

The gods are on our side, there ain’t no discussion  
Empire or bust, in the name of Augustus:
Poeticize the present as a prophecy fulfilled, 
And establish what just is as justice — “gods’ will”.

Rome fell but its myths remained,
In any Empire’s claim it’s divinely ordained
And like any epic strain, it entwines its refrain
With the disparate traditions of the places that I came

And so the
Fame of the Beowulf
Is made in slaying of enemy
Named as a descendent of a chain

It’s a pegan epic hanging
In an Abrahamic frame
An old English Gilgamesh
It’s different but the same

It’s a feedback chain
Of re-interpretations 
Of the classical past 
And amassed information  
As empires clash
In the path that their destined
Manifest destiny 
Until they crash — epic!

Epics and Empires,
Empires and Epics
Can you repeat the past for me, please? 
I didn’t get it.
Epics and Empires,
Empires and Epics
If you don’t know the future yet, 
It’s ‘cause you haven’t read it. 

If you want to understand the past
You can’t just scan it  fast and quote the quote “facts”
You have to hold the glass to how the Truth is performed
In the forging of Myth — for you’ve been Myth-informed.

And we who are born in the age of the paperless 
Maybe yet feel the rage of Achilles retraced in us,
As we’re placed in the cage of our hatreds with raised looks
Of crazed indignation, when we’re shaming on Facebook.

Can we be shook from the mythic machine 
That emits it’s mythemes from ubiquitous screens 
And convinces us to lean in to its intricate dream
Of its empire’s privatized, commodified being? 

Be the gods on our side, or God but inside us, 
Personified Mind, from the writer’s divine bust  
From Homer, to Rome, or to the Rapper beyond us  
Let our epic authors be radically honest  

And let our next myths, in our posts and our comments 
And in our politics be constantly conscious 
Of what’s come before and begin our poetics
With Sing, Muse, peace that would be epic. 

Epics and Empires
Empires and Epics  
You’re living in a poem  
Ever read it? 
Epics and Empire
Empires and Epics  
Epics and Epics
And Epics epics…
Epics and Empires
Empires and Epics
The myths of the past

Spin the facts of the present.