my hands used to shake as a child
they were spears to be impaled upon
and my teeth,
knives;
i remember feeling lonely
and then you came along
so i shed my skin each month
and waited by the tree
we spent our childhood in
there i realize that more than a decade has passed
and i am still waiting for someone who will never come;
i am alone again

O vicious household gods of Rome
you Manes, Lares, Muses, Fates
who justified patrician homes,
whose reign this poem celebrates,

Allow me now, in retrospect
to excavate, then analyze.
Depravity with cause, connect;
depriving you of alibis.

Relax your stiff noetic poise
as my plebeian pen records
through lyrical poetic noise
the crown imperial crime awards.

My lines, like foundlings, long to ****
a mother’s milk in measured draft
and dredge some gold from Tiber’s muck;
Lord Christ: illuminate my craft.

ROMULUS, let that wolf-*** go
and REMUS too – unlatch that breast…
milk of Etruscan madness, flow,
with empire’s crimes forthwith confessed.

We will not blame your leaden wares
nor ergot mold in rancid bread
for genocidal state affairs,
brutality, and martyred dead.

The Circus, leering, restless, loud,
cheers gladiatorial excess.
The haunted forum’s phantom-crowd
awaits the tyrant’s next address.

He speaks. The wind blows through the arches
stirring up the roadside litter.
Trumpets blare. The legion marches.
Empire’s aftertaste is bitter.

You were Antichrist. That is all.
We cannot dignify your past
or glorify from whence you fall
or praise the mold from which you’re cast.

Christ traveled far from Galilee –
came, saw, conquered – and on it goes.
Our king shall reign eternally;
that she-wolf’s milk no longer flows.