Tuesday, August 11, 2015

THE BIRDS OF ARES, THE 1ST GOP DEBATE & UNCIVIL DISCOURSE
























WHEN USING WORDS LIKE WEAPONS


Polyphonte became a strix ‘that cries by night, without food or drink, with head below and tips of feet above, a harbinger of war and civil strife to men’". [1]



Night h’owls strix-like
turning upsides↑
down↓

©2015 Decaying, Mythologies; Descending Series stephaniepope mythopoetry.com
#6words #writeprompt #poetTues


notes
1. In the Greek myth, Polyphonte (screaming) gives birth to twin sons, Agrios (the savage) and Oreios (the beastly). This (language) grows in size and strength and showing no honor to god(s) nor human beings alike, proceeds wantonly insolent of all.  Money does that; so does using one’s words like bullets to ask “gotcha” type questions in a presidential debate.  When Trump says of Megyn Kelly, “you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever,”  he may have intended to imply that she used her words like bullets hunting prey. He may have meant, her medium, Fox News came screaming at him like the mythical Polyphonte. In her myth it is told she comes ready to feed on flesh and blood.  She is a metaphorical ‘bird of Ares’. In environs where the Fox News moderators of the GOP national debate willing tell afterword how they were targeting Trump, how they used their words to fire questions meant to draw blood (something Trump expresses metaphorically when he proclaimes he sees "blood coming out of her eyes" (Kelly's eyes) and also "wherever", also tells us it was a group effort to ask Trump such kinds of trivial questions with the specific goal of marginalizing his ideas we have yet to hear him address and repress his opportunity to address policy questions of any depth. How unfair to the entire citizen body and other candidates in the debate, moreover, not just GOP voters, but everyone else tuning in that night.  One can understand Trump's comment by knowing the minor Greek myth of Polyphonte.  As if like a bird of prey, warlike, Fox News came at Trump using words to formulate questions that moved like screaming bullets. In deed, a foul play; indeed, an uncivil discourse ensues.

 


2. For connections between law and the Strix, Lilith, vampires and Lamia images in collective, mythic imagination see Orit Kamir’s Every Breath You Take: Stalking Narratives and The Law, p55.




[1] Oliphant, Samuel Grant (1913). "The Story of the Strix: Ancient". Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association (The Johns Hopkins University Press). pp. 133-34. See http://www.jstor.org/stable/282549?&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents accessed, August 11, 2015 at 9:29am.