Caelestis

Is there a shred of decency

behind the marble shroud

that cloaks your comely form?

Within your crystalline breast,

the near warmth of virgin

idealism must beat its adagio

of distant impulse, its forgotten

whisper of modest perfection.

Somewhere deep within

created form a message

must escape your silent lips,

a signal subverting masculine

logic of your portrayal.

If goddess you be, confound

this metamorphic hardening,

licentiousness unleashed.

Sylla

Beware of a crown seen

in another's liver. Emotions

not cleansed from the blood

are deadly to the soul. The liver

knows the liver and speaks the words

of ever-renewing passion. Control

is forfeited as hubris reigns,

and the Promethean scourge

burns in unceasing destruction.

The Layoffs

Words like doppelgängers hang

in the head. Two swinging bodies

on time-burdened ropes. Forced

retirement meant to mask the eyes

that look backward to purpose

and meaning, the swing of routine

woven into productivity damned

by unfettered nihilistic chaos.

Bodies stiffening, no longer

aware of the breeze that disturbs

the hair on distended heads.

Minds floating above the initial

shock of uselessness, crashing

against glass ceilings whose

identity is no more than figments

of deteriorating imagination.

The stench of released fluids

wafts over the cognitive fight

for reason. The phoenix sleeps

on chilled ashes behind the water

cooler. Yesterday's sardonic quip

gurgles in the clogged pipes

about to spew outrage and disbelief

on yet another unsuspecting victim. 

Testing Cicero

Anxious to hone his rhetorical skills,

the ambitious eighteen-year-old

pored over the dialogues of Cicero.

But it wasn't form but function

that shaped the intelligence

of young Augustine. Looking beyond

classical discourse, the student saw

into the mind of the master of rhetoric

and hungered for the wisdom

that reason held. In reason's circle

time is a never ending dimension

that brings the student toe to toe,

mind to mind with the master's

best assumptions. The challenge

is waged, the refutation laid.

The Knell

I tripped down the broken sidewalks

past the vines choking shrubs once

trimmed, grass once mowed. Gyrated

broken steps and creaking porch

to push against the peeling paint

of the door where dream began.

The settling house refused to yield

its hold, but I was determined

to enter its drafty rooms, be where

dust and cobwebs illuminated

what seemed so easy to attain.

Feral cats scurried from stained

cushions of the sofa whose once

royal blue clung to my inner eye,

a partly knit sweater, tattered

yarn clinging to the needles,

Middlemarch its edges chewed

by daring rodents dreaming

of nests deep within the walls

where feline paws could never

reach. My mind swayed, hoofing

the discords of internal music,

the might-of-beens grooved

in the hoodwinking wainscot.

The house groaned and the door

left ajar shuddered in laughter

at the dumbshow within, the irony

of return. A long black snake

slithered, soundlessly across the mantle,

mouthed an unsuspecting mouse.

Sardanapalus

A legend so delicious

could hardly have escaped

the excesses of the Romantics.

No king, living or imagined,

could exceed the lascivious hunger

ingrained in their decadent art.

Sardanapalus was sumptuously

ripe to beguile Lord Byron's

fecund pen, the lavish strokes

of a Delacroix brush, and the nihilistic

excesses of a Berlioz cantata.

Imagine Augustine's appall

had he time-travelled

to the salons of European aesthetes,

those who reveled in debaucheries

as old as time, as new as recently

uncorked, yet aged wine.

Myth

How wrongly Augustine

reads that myth. Perhaps

flirting with Manichaeans

in his youth left him

with a residue of crippling

dualism that occluded

the light of legend,

prevented his seeing

Lucretia for what she was.

The mythos of shame

avenged in the headwaters

of creation, the internalized

emotion firing a nation, a heroine

of lore cannot be discerned

by the reason of either or.

Accommodation to saga insists

on the artistry of ambiguity.