From Publius to Terra

Salve, amore mea,
I greet you from this new land,
My heart heavy with your absence,
Yet buoyed by the promise of our home.
...
Spare no thought for toils unfit for you,
My love, whose radiance rivals Juno.
A grand atrium will welcome your step,
Adorned with garlands for your triumph.
...
Through halls paved with Jove’s mosaic might,
Pastoral murals of Ceres’ fields will bloom,
Reflecting our farm in vibrant hues,
Your presence warming my impluvium’s heart.
...
A bedchamber awaits, fit for royalty,
Arched with cubes where Cupid dances,
His bow drawn to bind your heart to mine,
Sealing our love in eternal embrace.
...
All that remains is to build and sow,
Tilling under Sol and Luna’s gaze.
Watch over me, amore, from afar,
Your love my guide through field and toil.
...
I’ll write again with tales of this land,
Till our home rises to greet you.
Vale, amore mea,
The work endures for you.

Signed, PERTINAX

From Publius to Livia

Livia, I write to renounce your fields,
My sweat no longer yours to claim.
My harvests fed the eternal city,
Yet you see only Gaius and his shadow, Marcus.
...
Blind to the furrows I plowed,
The terraces I raised, the grapes I nurtured,
I tamed wild Ceres before you came,
Turning forest to field, field to farm.
...
Then you arrived, trailing discord’s hound,
Gorging on Gaius’s hollow praise,
Stealing credit for my toil,
Casting me as a shade on your wall.
...
I prayed to the Capitoline Triad,
Offered a white bull to Jupiter, king,
Begging radiant Sol to burn through your guise,
And bless my path with brighter horizons.
...
To Juno, I burned frankincense and myrrh,
Pleading ****** to sweep you astray,
Your pets adrift on Sicilian shores,
Left to Polyphemus’s wrathful gaze.
...
To Minerva, I poured my own wine,
Urging her to unmask your arachnid soul,
Your arrogance a web of self-woven lies,
Dagger-tipped legs stained with stolen blood.
...
The gods have heard, Livia. Your weave unravels.
My fields await under noonday sun,
While yours wither in my absence,
Your perfection a fading, frail deceit.

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