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He learned his aim with an erection

And was wilted over a ghostly pool

Spewed on the linoleum, cradled in the interstices,

A need to be told what to do.

It was that a searing pain was felt

It was that it stung between raw folds

It was that, drowned in the wan light,

Having tested razor on lurid wrists

The autodidact wilted; flushed from

From nape to tufted cleavage, dragged

Himself gasping along the tiles, trembling

In a corrugated prison, he cried out

In the drone, no end to the litter:

Pools of blood and dead skin cells.

Nothing learned, only remembered.

A wad of man lies in the interval.

When the roads became overgrown, there was no more transit; when there was no more transit, there was no more trade; when there was no more trade, there was no common tongue. And the bones in Minicius the eunuch’s hand hurt. It was night and the candles were nearly melted and the inkwell was empty and I said to young Anastasio, “Go to the cellar. Take four branches of hawthorn. Rive each with a hatchet in the water. Then leave them at the bank.”

Brother Minicius sulked. There was no unguent for his hand.

We stripped the branches of their bark, barefoot in the shallows, habits hiked to our knees. My ankle sundered a shoal of guppies. Brother Felix smiled and there was daylight behind him. We soaked the bark till the Sabbath went. We boiled the water till it thickened black. We added the dregs of the communion wine and prayed to our Holy Mother to forgive us. In goatskin bags it hung from a clothesline in the summer heat. When it dried, we added salt and iron and over the fire we stirred. Brother Anthemius said it smelled of sulfur and he wrinkled his face to sneeze. We snickered and the Prior glared at us and we went mum with thin smiles.

Then the bones in Brother Minicius’s hand did not hurt and there was no need of candles for God was generous and light flooded our chamber. With pumice he scraped the palimpsest of pagan doctrine. He brought quill to vellum with much pressure and the corner of his “A” was blotted. But he wrote with fluency and discretion over the faded scrawl; They looked like little bird tracks, those letters, and I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Not even his fluvial hand nor meanings therewith could divert me. My heart took in their sounds. My lips formed their shapes alone in my bed. And Deus shook the benighted trees.

Ganymede

Ganymede mounted the dung beetle.

Iridescent towards heaven they rose,

Flitting splay-wings: blue-black, green-gold

In bracing night-breeze the wincing

Stars shone on the boy who dreamed of bruised grapes.

He dreamed of their leaves and dreamed of their pulp.

There would be grapes in heaven unlike

The grapes on earth, its nectar sloshing in flagons,

Kraters filled to the brim, Among

filigreed thrones of solid white-gold,

ensconced in gathering ether.

The Lupercal

Romulus, Remus, suckle in the dark

Lupercal, teething mother she-wolf’s

Tumescent dug, tiny hands groping rough

Blood-matted fur, belly cold in the dark

Lupercal, the walls perspire deep

Into the craggy teeth of the dank,

Humid grotto, fingers seek in the dark

A blood-clotted bulb, and quietly weep

Alone. While others wring a final jet

Of warm sour milk from a spent teat,

He sobs, knowing the world will not have

Him. A child of morning will come forth,

A child of noise, of battle, of glory, of death.

The other, supine, will dream in a shallow grave.

He Touches a Hand to the Column

-- What does ambrosia taste of?

-- It tastes of breeze.

He touches a hand to the column,

No prints...no breath...alabaster.

The sage taking glass steps,

Puce robe rustling,

Rustling resolved

In jasmine-laced

Tintinnabulations…

-- Watch, the ether spreads.

Carry in the stillness,

The scent of chimes…

-- The last mortal to enter these realms,

Quaffed the lotus elixir...most indecorously.

Enveloping…

Noxious…

-- His face! I remember!

Darkness ahead.