VI
“Hearken, all ye there!”
Seis Seis Seis Seis Seis Seis
It began, as these things tend to do, with a quartz encrusted howl,
Lamenting under the crystalline shadows of Leda’s heartrending growl,
Her ravished moon bled and sank into the vocal cords of guilt coated cowards,
“Come back, come back! Oh, frivolous sanity thou art truly unjust, most unkind!”
Right here in this lonely place did my Darling dear spill devotion onto spiced dust,
She swayed on the rickety ridge surveying her sapphire kingdom’s splintered trust,
There it lay glittering, her city of cities, nothing now but a jeweled corpse.
V
“Know ye not of the oft-told tale of the drinking-well at World’s End?”
Cinco Cinco Cinco Cinco Cinco
My Lady who did fire the lyre of Orpheus, she weeps there in the misty chilled cold,
Wild it is, all about her the night wind nibbles at the skin clothing her fractured soul,
Cacophonic waves of regret silently scurry to labyrinths entombed with truths bold,
“Come back, come back! Oh, to my tempestuous ***** hasten with thy canticles!”
The symphonic fingers of fog pluck a requiem upon her autumn flavoured hair,
My Queen is attired for her banquet at tables far beyond Persephone’s desolate tears,
On the precipice her figure rises for the final faithful leap into Styx’s stratosphere.
IV
“Behold now the dread eyes of Hades, see how they hunger blood at the boil!”
Cuatro Cuatro Cuatro Cuatro
Carnivorous tasted memory plagues the betrayed Minotaur’s desired deliriums,
On these haunted shores I clutched her close and eagerly inhaled love’s elusive serum,
Legend has it a suicide was here on this very cliff-top, ‘twas a true Roman centurion,
“Come back, come back! Oh, let us under Demeter’s enchanted orchards lie!”
My obsidian-eyed Beauty gathers her eggs and over the fearful edge she unfurls them,
Closer to the dead of Euphrates she steps, I to madness hurtle as one condemned,
Bind savage Cerberus for the solitary reign of the wolf is fate for all hanged men.
III
“Prometheus thou hast drunk Pandora’s poisons, what sayest now the Titans?”
Tres Tres Tres
Golden fleeced days into the fleshy ground of Morpheus’s realm did seep away,
How well spent they were not even immortal Calypso shall decipher nor say,
Would that mine myopic ears had been shorn and tossed into Pompeii’s crisp clay,
“Come back, come back! Oh, gentle Maid no more, I beg thee stay awhile yet!”
What was it? Was it me? No, no, it could not be me for I was Achilles buried asleep,
How little we then knew, we two did partake of the stinging, you the wasp I the bee,
Mayhap ‘twas this unlocked the plumed towers to thy curled universe tunneled deep?
II
“Therefore did the Serpent spake and pronounce a judgment most nefarious!”
Dos Dos
She thinks back, my Lady fairer than Medea, she remembers a time happier,
Really there was, hear yet my credo, once upon-a-time there was no doubting terror,
But then a thing did into our guarded haven breach and wreathe about my treasure,
“Come back, come back! Oh, let me slake my thirst with thy honeyed spirit!”
My flesh did crawl, my fangs grew sharp, my spittle ran down and my fur stood taut,
The jawbone stiffened and all the while I burnt like an infernal phoenix caught,
Oh, my sweetly crazed fruit, did I for real the horror upon you wrought?
I
“Would that thou didst offer me thy riches upon the hour of the violet twilight...”
Uno
Wolfsbane moon, high above it rose in that final cracking of sacramental bones,
My Lady much wrong did you I, forever for this will the beast in me atone,
Now, at this baleful hour has the wolf left you on the edge of an embryonic cyclone,
“And so to the Elysian Fields where insanity fertilizes the soul do I embark...”
You cross the Rubicon and glide into the obliterating arms of Plutonic eternity,
The wolf, me, is left clawing your hooded red robe with absolutely no certainty,
I see you sailing upon Neptune’s trident, forever adrift on oceans of eternal cruelty.
N
“Seekest thou sanctuary in the hinterlands where the man with one eye is King?”
Cero...
pretium libertas est nex**
©Rangzeb Hussain