The Hero of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

A misthios was all I ever wanted
Not to be     am I dream     the money’s in
      A box in the clouds but     wait was tin
Cheap while I lived     the money’s clean     not haunted

In a tin box      hung from a bronze chain nailed
With a gold nail     to the clouds     I climb a match
      -stick ladder to my roof and watch
For the gold nail to freeze and snap in the cold

And dreams to fall from the sky     I kill enough
Wild goats     the eagle I command falls aw
      -ful on the next     and on his claw
I see the blood     I see the cloud-white fluff

The Hero of The Outer Worlds

Most of my health I get from locked containers
The yellow ones     I’ve got too many FunTimes
      Barrels I found on corpses sometimes
And sometimes find them     new in garbage cans or

Whatever the red containers are     some people
Only say one thing ever     some two     and e
      -ven if I set their planet free
Their lives don’t change you     smash all the mock apples

You’ve ever seen together you won’t get
A single real Earth apple     but the juice
      Is real     the shirt that was too loose
On the corpse     fits me ’cause it’s no one’s shirt

The Hero of The God of War

My father leads me to the mountain he
Carries my mother’s ashes in a pouch
      Me on his back up cliffs     we crouch
Beneath a heavy rock like frightened lizards     be

-tween it the     heavy rock     and the cold dirt
It’s not a tunnel     but it’s like a low
      -er sky     and shuffle as we go
Wading through human bones     I’m sick and hurt

Him by being sick     I years ago I was
And so to him I’m always sick the rock
      Might fall    and all the dry bones break
And puff away     blood traps the clouds in us

Note: “Blank Verse Sonnet Concluded by a Pure Rhyme and an Impure Rhyme” and “Elizabethan Sonnet on Violating the Flag Code” were first published in Berlin Lit

John Doe
Poet, Independent Writer
IN CONVERSATION WITH
Shane McCrae