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"Beautiful," we said,
lied,
dread-
-worshipping the idol,
the Frankenstein
parody of comers,
goers,
anachronistic bliss
stretched like molasses,
a stain on sugared lips.
Feel despite oppression;
Aim high, and hold God's gaze.
Treat kindness as your course,
Home like warmest maize.
Endure the call of justice,
Run far for such a sake.

I do swear this vow:

Loath all that loathes love's sake:
Odes bitter and false,
Valiance burnt, a lie like hate.
Earned comfort is your joy,

Yarn sewn from woolen craze.
Our hearts are twice apart,
Umbral moons a sunlit blaze.

Thus:
Forever
for never
always, last May
she'd felt the air was acidic
scorching past bruised lips to fuel the wrong kind of engine
that water was a balm just out of reach, forbidden.

Today, with her boot turned to lead, Jessie raced alongside relief
a king's ransom in her contacts
she a queen-to-be.​
I wonder: 'Who is Zeus?'
Who is the son of traitorous Kronos and beleaguered Rhea?
You: a declaration: intent on becoming: "Tell me,"
He is the folly of Man given might, a thunderbolt blight,
bled black Kemet, fallacy bent unto wretched epithet:
Elicius-largest: Jupiter ascendant.

This is Your tale, babe of squalor:
royal illusion ( ) delusion pressed
red into the white of Our marble edification:
table dressed in bronze/blade a throated song/stinging queens
spited joy

'Oh, Hera, honoured Mother: a saintess I have become.'
'A saintess.'
'A saintess.'
'A sinner/killer/thief of ****-driven masculinity.'

"I am Zeus: King and ****** of all things gentle!"
figment derived authority
a boy unborn from womb-destroyed embroidery/legitimacy bought with coin

"Tell me this tale."
There are italicised parts missing, which would have denoted yet another way of reading the above. They are as follows:

'This is Your tale' - 'spited joy' - 'figment derived authority'
"Why should I birth my oppressor?"
He listens, gnarled fingers ash and gold

I dare to be bold:
"I want to live."

Skin depresses, thermal joining a whispered invective:
"Stop talking."

Cloth shifts, the radio spits:
"I met a cheerleader, a real young bleeder-"

The bed creaks: I whisper:
Soundless, history unfolds.
A beginning is simple, or say it's been said.
I differ in thinking, my heart one of dread.
That first step is cosmic, in breadth and in weight.
It harries both shoulders, Atlas made lame.

To face fear and fight folly, to bear shame and know loss.
Failure without trying seems the easier lot.
To drown without burning, wings shapen wax;
this, my instincts gather - thus, my spoke snaps.

For allowed or barred, followed or infamed,
immortalized, idolized, beloved or lame;
Man is Man, too mortal by half;
ad astra, I think - perfection, I gasp.

A goal, I breathe; a sin, most certain.
A thing I need, marrow and bourbon;
for the soul and mind, for my body and heart.
It stops and pushes, my dread, my art.
Ad astra - To the stars.
I laughed, and they joined in.
I kissed their cheek, freed them from sin.
Salt on my lips, I spoke forgiveness.
Funny, being a child at eighty.
I'm somewhere between atheistic and agnostic, but the idea of 'God' has always drawn my attention. The certainty people have of 'his' inhuman perfection... well, it's not very satisfying.
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