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.

Berserker

Lone berserker…a fortnight dead…
Stiff in a bed of dry leaves…
Shocks of red tendril bursting

From lineaments of terror…
Aghast, you fathom, mouthful of dirt,
No tongue in your head.

A fortnight ago,
You scarfed pig knuckle and bashed a tankard
On the head of an old peasant;

Your vassals roared with laughter.

He died the next day,
You brandished cudgel and ate swine offal,
Your eyes smoldered in battle…
Lopping stalks of flesh…

Thrashing armored onslaughts…

Choking on the fumes of battle,

You winced at the taste of sulfur,

Your voice was drowned in the din.

A fortnight ago,
Your nostrils flared hairs fierce and crimson,
But your voice was soft and weak.
A gash splayed panic across your face,
But your hands were free from callous.

That night, a man cowered in your shadow

And your throat grew tight,

And you trembled, eyes quavered,

And he was severed clean.

A fortnight ago, a virgin you ravished,

Her neck dithered in your hold,

Eyes glazed in the moonlight,

She screeched and scratched and begged.

And with her last wheezing breaths

She made one final wheezing plea.

And weak as she was, she couldn’t grip

Not even the dirt or speak but a word.

You crushed her head with a rock.

Lone berserker, a fortnight dead,

Carrion fraught with vermin.

In your last moments you fathomed

All that you feared: The far-flung stars…

The yawning night…The swarthy man

Who strummed ancient chords on

An ancient instrument on an unknown

Island in the waning dusk.

He you spared…He was your end.

You lived in revelry,

You reveled in daybreak,

And when day broke, you swilled mead,

And when you swilled mead,

You spilled blood, And now your body,

Drained of its humors, makes of its bones

A world for the vermin.

They will not go hungry.

Mr. Hidari

You knew that time
Left alone was flimsy
And a little sad, like a bath
When the water’s gone tepid

And you’re old;
You lower yourself
Your brittle trove of bones
And waste in nakedness.

Those few gray hairs
On your paunch: one long
And odd and strangely black,
Floats like a thin reed

And you recall those girls
You teased and entered,
They winced and lisped,
Flushed warm with life.

You knew those supple beauties:
Toes, thighs, arms, breasts - then -
As you know the twinge in your jaw
Or the dry pressure of soles on tatami.

Now, you’re alone,
With a sponge and the moon,
Gather your knees in your arms.

Sherbet

Swarthy mortals from the north,
Sun-cracked and dry-mouthed.
"Our queen is unblemished.
Her litter smells of lilac,
Contains a peach-colored girl."
Her lithe arm through the curtains,
Fair-skinned Goddess
Carried by two Mamelukes
(Exchanged for wicker and grain)
Panting like animals.
One thinks of the east.
There's sherbet in the east,
Dark language from their guts,
Moping, dewy leaves.
Emirs languish in their sumptuous shade,
Semi-divine, half-asleep.
They tense their mortal tendons.
Grit their brittle teeth.
There's sherbet in the east.

Cabbages

My body drunk with sun;
Hard, baked clay beneath scorched flesh.
My bones sense the coming Sabbath,
By sunset, I tend to my cabbages,
Toiling in the waning dusk.
I dig in the earth and its secret musk.

Supper’s prayers whisper on my dry tongue,
Dry helpings for a day’s labor.
Since I was a boy, the same dry loaf, the solitude.
Father would come with night by candlelight,
Steps squelching on the wet mud floor,
His secret musk seeps six feet beneath…

My sleeping vessel oppressed by dreams,
A thatched roof threatened by winds,
A heavy silence sloshing in the earth’s belly,
I follow him, frozen in his stare.
His pale specter mouths with lips cracked and cruel,
“It’s a sin, sirrah, it’s a sin.”

I envy the world of worms and mites,
A world of earth and no remission,
Digging portals into darkness damp and fertile,
Leaving the Sabbath light sovereign on the surface,
Arid and dumb with vegetable sin,
Me nestled between singed leaves.

The day breaks in its morning light.,
Seen submerged, the surface is light,

My Life in the Glen

In the winter the frost was my mother,
And I was a hooved fetus with barely a "coo"
To carry me to Spring bloody and ejected,
Blessed with a voice.

In the summer I brayed to mother-stars
And with my bleats I pled
Until she fell to glen and melted
Me wholly into horse parts.

I belted sounds into the brisk fall air,
With something of autumn, and something alone,
My hooves to the night sky, I grazed nothing,
And Mother-stars were melted

So no stars would speak.
My mane grew lustrous in the night,
And words grew through my pursed lips,
Not for nothing.

No, no world unspools to nothing
Something exists for its own sake, not for horse speech
Nor for horse brain did I stretch my limbs
And gallop towards father-sun

Heavy God in the summer.
My limbs gave way, in the light,
In the dew, I fell, parched
Voice, asleep in the glen.