his father was a nobody who claimed the throne
when every royal head was
lopped off in the Russian courtyard's winter;
the transom handsome; screaming
                                                        women
love in the sun rapacious
                                        where the married men               made of      ice
**** the maid in front of the king                                who loses his head;
the gods favored the II b/c his father could have been
                                                                ­                     a ******* w/ several wives across                    the              divided               ­                       
                                         ­                                                        countryside;
every third neighbor was a cousin or uncle or aunt like a forest dwelling Denisovan relic; the withered old
grandmother living in a cottage made of
arsenic laced cookies
& she laughed w/ the blue eerie remains of hosed down
                                                         sailors from the bottom of the earth;
wet w/ wild wonder the II conquered
                                                         w/ his heart, art & poetry his
                                                                ­                                forte
until she came;
this is the
                                little bit of ***** she wore torn off                        
I believe;
the rosemary bush was fragrant
in the wild stench of the willow's breath
dish brimming w/ the broken seams she sent
to her knife-edged coffin
                                             knives drawn;

I am that art; thou art Cleosteleus                                             XXXXXXXXX