Mount Etna erupts today.
Lava flows down the mountain ridges
like sands through the hourglass;
so are the graves of our wives…

Hephaestus has blown the roof off
his workshop again, his fragile
masculinity turned fire geyser,
and the edges of Sicily are singed.

He has lived millenia entangled
in his parents’ drama, desiring their approval,
he once freed Athena from his father’s skull
with his ax, heroic with tools in hand.

Still, his sister refused his hand,
for as a newborn goddess,
she envisioned a wisdom-forward life,
(she probably owned cats).

Cast off Olympus for his deformity
(or was it the fall that left him lame?)
he became a recluse,
hammered at a mountain from within.

He found peace making
objects of beauty to be admired,
armor for warriors to be feared,
in his sanctuary sauna and forge, until

His cousin Dionysus visits, gets him drunk,
drags him back up to the family compound,
Hephaestus chains his mother to an enchanted throne
(symbolic much?) which he handcrafted, of course

To free Hera, the gods coerce Aphrodite
to give herself to him. If he can’t be beautiful,
he can sure as hell own her beauty,
but what he cannot do is force her to love him.

As sure as the scissors of the Fates need sharpening
after a cleansing rain, the magma of anger
just under the crust of the rejected man
will bubble over and burn all of humanity.