From Publius
To Livia

I'm writing to tell you
I will no longer work your fields

For too long my sweat bled to make you look good
Mine harvest fed the entire eternal city
For months!

Yet you'd eyes only for the leadened ***** of
Gaius
And
Marcus
It's a wonder you haven't gone blind yet

Or mayhaps you have?

It would explain your complete and utter ignorance
Of the goings on right outside your window!

Those furrows
I plowed
That terrace
I built
Those grapes
I grew

I nurtured this land long before you
And Marcus

Originally,
It was just myself and Gaius
Charged with taming wild Ceres
Transforming forest to field
Then field to farm
A cornucopia of plenty

Then you came along
Your drooling dog in tow
Salivating the discord of Discord
While gorging yourself on Gaius' selfish lies
Taking credit for mine own efforts
And treating me as a mere shadow on the wall

Invisible to all

Well,
I prayed to the Capitoline Triad
I offered a white bull to Jupiter the king
And asked him to command radiant Sol
To shine bright on your shade
And bless me with brighter horizons

I begged jealous Juno
To send windy ****** to blow you off course
Along with your precious pets
Hopefully you'll crash on Sicilian shores
With only furious Polyphemus for company
For this I burned frankincense and myrrh

To ****** Minerva
A libation of mine own wine
So she might reveal your true arachnid self
A punishment for your self aggrandizing arrogance
Thinking yourself wiser in the art of cultivation
Than the goddess of wisdom herself

Dear Livia,
You should be worried

Already my horizons brighten
As yours begins to dim in mine absence
And slowly, your guise of perfection is slipping
Revealing six sinewy legs, dagger tipped
And fangs dyed red with innocent blood

The Gods have heard my prayers
And your web begins to unravel

Praise Olympus

Signed,
PERTINAX

I have become as steel, forged within frigid winters heart

With a hardness, no desert summer could hope to rust

Sharpened to a fine edge between shifting sands

And grinding glaciers, which, given millennia have honed

Shaping my geometry in such a way as to cut inward

Carving jagged crevasses at right angles to the core

Whose arrhythmic pattern resembles a diseased damascus

Indistinguishable from the delaminations of a failed weld

Running down the length of my spine with spiderweb cracks

Covered by a clever fuller designed to distract the eye

With a stylized straight line, slowly tapering at the tip

Rounded by the blunt force trauma of repeatedly stabbing

The anvil on which I had been so hastily hammered

Seasons change
Just ask the jay
Whose plume is blue
As the sky
After a fierce rain
Inundates the land
Bringing with it winds
Whose currents lift the jay
To dance among scattered clouds
Waving a final goodbye
To the warmth of summer sun
Setting past falls forward
Into winters grasp
Whose chill shocks the jay
With visions of ice and snow and frost
A sign to migrate to warmer climbs
Where fall has fallen backward
And summer sun rises anew
Challenging the changing season
To remain sunny and blue

The Gods once sang hymns of Garland twined
Dancing nymphs steadily seducing Zeus’s mind
They sang about love, passion, and a woman scorned
For Hera, wife of Zeus, Hephaestus, his brother warned
“Aphrodite may be sweet, *****, and supple
But the two of you together will bring only trouble”
Brooding Zeus sulked, like the heroes of old
Alexander may be great but he will be BOLD

Ignoring the warning, to the glade he went
Sending a message with Mercury, his love he sent
Luna hung low over the trees that night
Fireflies flashing accenting the light
There she strode, Aphrodite the beautiful
Come here to meet Zeus, lord of the thunderbolt
“My king, with Mercury your words I read
Sweet nothings echo in my heart that bleeds
In wanting for you, I bellow the forge of my heart
My longing for you had me longing to depart”

Zeus rushed to his muse, his body filled with lust
Never stopping to consider he was betraying Hera’s trust
For the queen had played mighty Zeus, an illusion she wore
Aphrodite in image but in Hera her SCORN
Together they lay in lust passions raged
To feel his love again being all that she craved
Her moans turned to laughter, her plot complete
The nymphs turned to vines snaring his feet
“Hera, my love, do not be angered
My feelings for you were never endangered
I knew it was you from the very beginning
I was just simply curious to see the ending”

Hera wasn’t interested in any more of his lies
Like Uranus before him she would cut off his pride
Never again would he sire another *******
She would remain queen on Olympus from here on after
In celebration she cast the ******* down the mountain
Into a babbling spring where nymphs danced ’round a fountain
When suddenly an infant sprang from holy water deep
A boy was born immaculately complete
Raised by the dryad’s a man he grew
Through labors of love to prove his due

Ignorant of the boy, Hera jealously ruled Olympus
With Zeus crippled her power now limitless
Until a prophecy was issued by Apollo’s oracle
“A child born, he who is destined to wear the purple”
Worried, Hera sent Mercury down to Gaia’s shores
His mission to find the boy before he could wage his war
Too late he was, for once, he was too slow
The boy (now a man) was already in Olympus with his father in tow
“Hera, I’m here to claim my throne, father as my witness
From him I was born, a product of your sickness
Your husband you tricked, maimed, and usurped
That throne is mine and Olympus will never be yours
Then he called forth his first thunderbolt
Casting Hera into the void and ending her revolt

As I wake to a new day, a new me arises
Different yet the same, a fresh reset
Retaining those values, fundamental
In defining one's true character, absent
The previous outline of my whole.

Confusion takes hold, for now I am half
Like folded tracing paper, overlapping
Complex lines in gesture, ever moving
In an attempt to remember, who I was
Before peaceful sleep took me under.

Stubborn I stand tall, looking around
To my surroundings, searching for meaning
Amongst a newly minted world, glimpsing
A single picture, mirroring my sketch
Standing next to the only reason I wake.

...

Only your beauty can complete my art.

...

You, my heart.