(With only slight apologies to the half-actress who played
Andromache .)
Death of a Nation: Backstory
How
could the splendid, high-walled city fall?
Old poets failed to earn their salaries,
For only Hollywood resolves the crux:
The Trojans fell for want of calories.
Those paltry Greeks could not have razed bright Troy:
That hollow ships included such small food
Reveals these figure-watching "warrior-sailors"
As naval gazers, and a snaky brood:
Their strategists--untutored, vain, and sordid;
Their Weapon X--a willowy Achilles;
Their other heroes couldn't clog a jakes--
Assorted ranks of Thoroughly Attic Millies.
Watch puffy-chested Hector's rippling arms
Glisten more brightly than the klieg-light sun:
How could Troy's human shield be broken by
A beefcake hot-dog with a tiny bun?
When poets pinned the blame unequably
On equine wood, Odysseus, and Zeus,
They turned a blinkered eye to the true cause:
Andromache's embrace was Hector's noose.
That prince, the night before his duel, beholds
His fashion-model wife, how gaunt and pallid
She looks at dinner. He admonishes:
"That's not a meal! Put dressing on that salad!"
"But lord," she meekly says, "our people look
To me for light when Dardan plains grow dark
With blood. I have an image to uphold.
Shall I grow wide as a flat-bottomed bark?"
Troy's hope encircles then his fragile wife
In tender arms that slew a hundred men.
Her head, its colors rare as saffron, burrows
Into his breast. He tells her that she's thin,
Thinking he does aright. And so it seems,
Till late that night, she wonders if rebukes
Hid in his proffered comfort. Nervous, mad,
She breaks into the larder; gorges; pukes.
Proud Hector rises to Apollo's hooves:
The chariot trampling on the sail-like clouds
Portends a victory for all he loves.
He calls for food--but what he's brought astounds.
"I'd beat you, wife, except it wastes my strength!
No beef, no chicken, not a single egg?
Would that I could eat Helen! But, no matter.
This day shall see that twerp Achilles beg!"
Thus famished Hector took the fateful field,
His empty stomach gurgling like a baby,
And strength to match. Troy's soon consumed by flames.
Could one meal alter history? Well, maybe.
Moral:
No meat is murder.
[This message has been edited by Clay Stockton (edited June 13, 2004).]