Hector and Achilles

by Feisal G. Mohamed

Hector and Achilles
stood toe-to-toe,
in an epic battle of
Good against Evil.
Or not quite:
it's sometimes tough to find
Good
in an epic battle of
Good against Evil,
So we'll just say that they fought
for different kingdoms,
Only Achilles never cared much
for his.
Perhaps they fought for different gods?
Not really.
Achilles, of course, had that
whole thing about
avenging his buddy Patroclus,
and Hector could say that he was
just acting in the interests
of homeland security,
but maybe they both spent too much time
admiring
the shine of their armor
to leave it
sitting on the shelf.
Let's just say that they didn't get along.
Of course it wasn't always that way,
Hector once liked Achilles
quite a bit,
Admired his fighting spirit,
crazy bastard that he was,
even gave him gifts of arms,
and CIA training when he was
a pain in the ass to
the sons of Atreus
back in the 80's.
Hector doesn't
talk about that much
now.
It wasn't Helen
that drove them apart,
Achilles was glad to see
Menelaus feel the smart
of her loss,
And Hector was pleased
to have another piece
of eye candy
In the Trojan court,
stolen right from underneath
the commies' noses,
made him feel that all was well
in the world.
(never mind that Paris beat the crap
out of her every chance he got-
everyone knew it-
but, as they say,
you can't win 'em all)
Achilles would win this day
and do a good deal
of gloating about it
at the expense
of poor Hector's
good looks.
And he would live
to profit from
Odysseus's knowledge of Troy's
all-gifts-accepted
policy,
a practice born of unshakable faith
in the good-guy image
peddled in its own PR.
(the empire once took great pride
in training the world's
horse-carvers,
it became a thriving business:
money-down, tools provided,
no questions asked.)
Yes Achilles won this foul day
but never saw Troy fall,
A fleeting victory for the Achaean race
erased when
Rome rose
on columns of blood
felled
by the more
peaceful pillars
for which Mohammed's followers
fought
so deftly. . .
but these later events
are very different
from our story.
completely irrelevant.