I am Hercules without muscles.
Zeus without thunder. Hades
without an underworld. Drifting,
like a show out of Nashville
without a guitar. Pure country
and dirty to the core. I am a Pollock
without dripping a single droplet of
paint. Brooklyn without a bridge.
People cross over me without
anywhere to go and no reason
to go there. I am a tape cassette.
The magic is in my obsoleteness,
and I feel lowest when I am on top
of a mountain in the Adorindacks,
and quietest when I am in a bar
drinking shots of grenadine listening
to the Grateful Dead. A lost civilization
hidden on my forehead like a tattoo.
George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, the Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the Havana Times, the South China Morning Post, the Buffalo News, and more.
I recently learned that the Bodhisattva Vajrapani became associated with Hercules during the ancient era of Silk Road travel.
Absolutely. Vajrapani became identified with Hercules/Herakles shortly after Greek contact with the Indians along the Silk Road.