Odin and his eye
I look off into blinding light of the setting sun,
A star rising on the other end of the world-tree today,
Tomorrow, and the day after that again and again.
Sleipnir passes like floaters in sunrays of the blue sky
And into Jotunheim whiteness, caked in colors of the atmosphere,
Dancing with dim god-like sparkles accompanied by blankness.
Valkyries cry out into the night, mead spilling onto their breasts.
Smoke burns from funeral pyres dedicated to an empty wallet;
My bi-frost bi-fold stamped with a nordic eyeball.
I wandered willingly to the spring of open collegiate wisdom.
My single back-pocket leather oculis was all I could offer.
In the face of Ragnarok, of gradual adulthood, I sacrificed my eye.
Surrounding intellectual Vikings like me die on battlefields,
Waste in double-wides and in the basements of their all-fathers.
Still they waste, still they toil, still, they curse Geifon for their luck.
In my alms from the well, I received two ravens: Knowledge, and Interest.
Knowledge flies over the well-spring Valhalla campuses
Collecting teachings of lectures and Havamal textbooks,
Sharpening its Mimir feathers like a sword to a whetstone,
Returning, shining and perching purposeful on my shoulder.
While Knowledge flies, Interest glides over Midgard.
Burdens of man cling to his oily black primaries and minors,
Accumulating a weight akin to a condor, a warship.
When he returns, my shoulder can hardly support him.
The loans seize with the power of frost giants,
Taking from me four of Sleipnir's legs, and my boy Tyr's hand.
Leaving me nothing but an occupationless kingdom to rule over.
And here I slouch, over the well, looking in with indifference.
Philosophies and degrees perch along my tavern halls.
While I feel the strength of forged synapses and syntax on one shoulder,
I strain from the burden of growing gold, painfully smothering the other.
As the sun sets, the pyre illuminates empty Asgardian pockets
And the flooding mind of a Ragnorok bank account forclosure.
For we which now behold these days,
Had eyes to wander, but lack funds to praise.