The camp fire burns high and
Provisions carried from home are passed about.
Laughing faces of the unyet tested,
The over morale of an Emperors finest legion
Marching into Gaulic lands
With heads held high.

Spirits are soaring and blessings are passed,
And the fluttering thoughts of home are flower painted.
Perhaps I will be back before the July sun
Bakes my armored back,
Perhaps I will be back to attend to Love
And its reaping yield
Before a burning sun alters my heart.

She was borne in ocean spray
A goddess before the gods.
When I look in the mirror and curse my image,
It is to her I unwittingly pray.

Aphrodite, our savior, in lipstick
Sipping red wine at a table no one is good enough for,
(And yet, we can’t take our eyes off her).

The goddess of love is blood.
Her image comes with the taste of metal,
Chewing on my lip
Instead of looking him in the eyes.
Aphrodite’s image is not one for photography,
I see nothing, and laugh
Halfheartedly.

I can’t imagine love as a being,
Nor can I see beauty as a form.
Both are beyond my fingertips---
I suppose a goddess can be sea foam.

The grass is always greener
When the sun and moon share time
And if you wish to change demeanor
You'll learn this truth, I find

For I have rode the albatross
And dove deep into the sea
I have climbed with Sisyphus
And Hades set me free

I feel the old gods in me breathe.
Subtle hands, contracting intercostals,
feminine fingers that scream and wail when I let men with ill intent come near me -
feminine fingers that announce themselves as Athena, Diana.
Do you have a legacy?
I feel Nefertiti, Osiris, Iris, clench their fists in my gut when I cry in my sleep and wake up angry -
Hecate spits and twitches her paws when my undulating heart lacks the oil that flourished during her reign.
Wings over me, the contorted body of Nike. Protective but irate.
A shout, and a burst blood vessel in the corner of my eye -
by the aging moon this tumult of Dido's wild ichor inside me grows...
Have you ever used your voice?
Athena's words in my head telling me to scream -
Roar of the old gods telling me to run -
Their tongues in the sand and in the grass blades.
Child of flesh and hard times.
An unknown voice from the mouth of my mother commands me - 'take firm grasp of the magic within you'
Perhaps I am too afraid to reply.

are you collecting the old counts of how
they slaughtered your son and his power-hungry heart,
twenty three knives to the torso,
the killing blow delivered by a beloved friend?
or are those the scrolls that you wish
dust would settle over forever, relics and reliefs of
everything you see behind your closed eyelids.
a politician’s mother
must be all the more clever; her son will not
be going into battle to die with honor
but rather with deceit. give her-- you-- a laurel wreath,
the irony of the goddess nike standing
golden over the tomb of your son: emperor,
caesar. mother of summer, of boiling july,
are you not the sun? are you not the constellations
freckling burnt pale skin? are you not
the fiercest and brightest of warriors, quietly,
without warning?

Diana of the woods and
Wild animals, as swift as winds
That rustle leaves, her muscles are as
Mighty as the brown bear, her legs are as
Steady and strong as the wolf dog that yips
At her swiveling hips, her motion as graceful
As the rushing rivers, yet as fierce as a tornado’s
Spiral, pouncing, bounding, she cuts the air as sharp
As the arrow that springs from her bow, eyes transfixed
On her target—

Diana, goddess of the woods and
Wild animals, captured in black bronze
And displayed atop marble like a prize won.

I blame Diana, the hunt, the game.
He was a fool for her wily ways.
I blame the girl, the victor of the tale.
She gets the spoils, I only fail.

He says he needs time.
But time doesn't wait.

Mired in history, coiled around by cheap reflections
On previous ramshackle glory,
Roman armies camped in valleys,
Swords trickling with blood from the battle
On the heath. Bodies covering the bracken
Like a foreshortened locust swarm, wingless

Over the town. The triumphant Italians had there
On the high ground, above the sinuous Col,
Built temples
And baths. Marble hauled in from Sicilian quarries,
Loaded on to Carthaginian ships by fierce North African slaves-
Themselves beaten warriors.
They were in the town when the tribes struck,
Dying in chains.

Before their own savage deaths, they slaughtered
Others, cut them into ragged pieces, decapitated, *****,
Choralling songs of victory, leaving none alive.
That day, the dun hills smelt better!
They torched the temples and wasted the proud theatre,
The slender apogee of culture.

Now the town slumbers in the present,
Burying its past under beautiful gardens, purple flowers and
Raffish gladioli peeking out from unobtrusive suburbs
Stinking of ancient corpses.