"romulus" poems
You have heard it said that
A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
But truly I tell you that
I am that I am that I am that I am
Dripping with Jehovah and stardust we fell to earth
Pieces of atmosphere pieced together
And who can trace the mythology of our chemical compositions
Or rewrite the narrative of our anatomies?
I fell to earth soaked in Yahweh and covered in snakebites
Black holes where the fangs sunk into the astronomy of my freckled skin
All the galaxies of my body each with their own elliptical orbits
Connect the dots to form two wolves in my milky way
Romulus and Remus –
My ******* bear venom white as the purest lamb
Whisper astrology and
Remember the day we built Rome by stacking corpses
Remember the day when all the stars burned red for us
But that was millennia ago and
I’m not your Venus anymore –
I’m nobody’s ********* Venus anymore
It was the age of Pisces and we came out drenched in Messiah
You found me picking painted roses on asteroid planets
With a blonde-haired child and a fox
In the garden green snakes and white roses
Thorns and soft pink ribbon-tongues
Fangs and velvet petals
Two drops of blood in the white sand like Mary,
I bore a son and named him Ares
I named him Mars
I named him Set
Boys will be boys will be boys will be monsters, you know that
I am that I am that I am that I am.
Swim down deep enough into the black waters and you’ll reach the heavens
Keep drawing blood from thorn wounds and you’ll drag out the atmosphere
Stare out intently into the abyss and the abyss will stare back into you
These are the things we knew
When we reached the outer boundary of the cosmos
And realized how hydrogen is nothing but celestial amniotic fluid
We, motionless
Smothered by God and Carbon and perfume and poison
In this ****** we named universe
On this fetus we named Earth
I am that I am that I am that I am
Truly with you until the end of the age
Until the afterbirth of star matter gets tossed out with the baby and the bathwater.
You have heard it said
A rose called by any other name wouldn’t smell as sweet
But truly I tell you
A rose is only as beautiful and fragrant as its thorns are sharp
And if you want to know what fills the space between protons and electrons
The gaps between breaths
The light-years between planets
Then listen to the sound of your own heart beating
Counting down the gestation period of our own reality
I am that I am that I am that I am
I’m more than a Rose.
Aug 25, 2015
Aug 25, 2015 at 7:14 PM UTC
the brain and mind are not the same thing.
a brain floats, suspended,
down to the tips of my toes
and the blue rivers underneath my skin.
it is a box; simple tasks and quiet construction.
the mind has no such manuals.
it sees baboons in filtered skylights,
eyes as red as the blushing dawn,
gushing about over the hilltops of my shoulders.
it sees stop signs in the glass cracks
of my wooden closet door,
where the dark seeps around the green-light-go.
it sees fingertip to lip,
raccoons at rusty roadways,
Remus and Romulus locked in eternal combat;
preserved in the grains in the cherry tree trunk.
the brain is in the head,
but the mind is somewhere a little above;
hiding away in a doomsday bunker,
loud warnings burning the air,
bathed in cobwebs and blue lights.
away from people who haven’t quite learned,
that the brain and mind are not the same thing.
Feb 27, 2019
Feb 27, 2019 at 2:37 AM UTC
Look down
From on high
Lord knows
How bleeds your sharp knife
Incisor
My pack fights tooth and nail
Our brood suckles hard
Gets our due from each ****
Renewable Romulus and Remus
Makes Mother happy
Her pups engaged
Zeus burst his brain making you
Jupiter’s irrational exuberance
Pumped up
Hear me now
Believe me later
We guttersnipes must contend
With your white largesse
**** on us trickler
At least give us jobs
Blown handy our daily ****
Rather eat ***
Off a silver platter
Served by Salome
Jun 5, 2014
Jun 5, 2014 at 5:48 AM UTC
Dance me a song dreck thinker.
Let the ocean wash away your thoughts of rain.
Understand scars are forever but so are diamonds.
And every night you'll dream again.
You'll never comprehend the dark like the moon
Or the light like the sun.
Learn that only Monty python knows the meaning of life, and where the holy grail is.
So stop searching and just appreciate uncertainty.
Then sing me a dream because I'm tired of screamed night terrors.
Jul 28, 2013
Jul 28, 2013 at 10:32 PM UTC
Stream of consciousness
traveling down tin cans and a string
going on about Romulus
and ramblings, vibrating in between
half a world away
keeping each other awake
thanks again
for the company
Aug 20, 2018
Aug 20, 2018 at 8:23 AM UTC
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-tit 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.
Sep 9, 2015
Sep 9, 2015 at 8:08 PM UTC
.
Waves of psychic nausea
make the teeth shiver,
as the mind grates on lava
and the cloak pulls tight.
An echo from an illusion
permeates the imagination.
glistening with rancid dew
resplendent in its own reflection.
The image mirrored
is not the genuine original.
The genuine original
is not the image mirrored.
Born of the same picture
yet entities of separate strokes,
Romulus and Remus consort
to blur the edges and paint the story.
The host, confused and special,
supplicates to the paths,
waiting for the reformation,
release, relief, and re-definition.
© Pagan Paul (19/06/17)
Jun 20, 2017
Jun 20, 2017 at 4:43 AM UTC
No time to sleep.
Too broke to eat.
Into my books
I start to weep.
Said I could be
anything:
Go out! Go forth!
Chase your dreams!
Except I ****
at calculus,
and who the hell
is Romulus?
I need two jobs
to pay the rent;
An exponential
growth of debt.
They say, "go get
an internship,"
but with pre-reqs
I'm not equipped.
Need to study,
everyday--
'less I throw
my whole life away!
Volunteer!
Try something new!
Stop giving me
more things to do!
I'm up to my knees.
My waist. My chin!
Not sure if I
know how to swim.
Will this ordeal
ever desist?
Or I am going to
die like this?
May 13, 2016
May 13, 2016 at 1:40 PM UTC
the old gods here lay
in beds of clay and marble
jupiter fallen
May 28, 2015
May 28, 2015 at 10:03 AM UTC
Allowance of difference transforms not entirety, but perhaps enough. We are cast all over the place. By chance some grow. Seeds of diversity bloom without genetic precursors. Hybrid’s forerunning amalgamations were somewhere in time not as pure. Half-bred mongrel dogs the same. Romulus and Remus suckle a wolf-bitch surrogate. Even after hardships and trials together, turn on each other. Conditioning may not change what is inheriting, but has its influences. Feral children of ancient mythography become heroes of a Rome, who has since seen rise to popes. What injects change into society? Today’s biotechnology gives birth to genetically engineered seed of change. Who bows to New God, by its name Monsanto? Collectively, third-world nations in a final Round-Up. Extermination business as usual.
Apr 18, 2016
Apr 18, 2016 at 9:56 AM UTC
I don’t like my name but I love the way it sounds next to yours. There are billions of things I’ll never understand, like the time, and space, and why I love you as much as I do. I may not understand much, but the way your lips move when you say my name, darling that solves all of nature’s and man’s mysteries combined.
If I could still shut my eyes tight in a stroller
gliding through an amusement park,
with the belief that death won’t ever lay a cruel finger on me,
If I could only see the way your words twirl in the air,
complement mine over the satellite waves of our hearts
When we speak, our words collide and dance, and billions of atoms split into two.
You are the goal I’m trying to reach,
all I want to sense and suffer through
The world surrounds us with it’s restless prying
I am joyed with you beside me, I feel right, I feel glory
Romulus is the son of Mars,
you’re beautiful
unfinished
Feb 2, 2012
Feb 2, 2012 at 9:50 AM UTC
Stuck in the wilderness, among the sanctums of green and indigo grandeur
Romulus and Remus are writing along their wills, shaking hands with the forest spirits as they pass by on the thorn covered roads
Crowns of silver being woven by the wrens in the willows, transmuting their echoes to blistered esteems
Among these wrecked ships, that naval graveyard whispering ink patches to sandpaper cathedrals
These things set in, among green woods with creatures looking on, as the sun sets upon the world
May 10, 2015
May 10, 2015 at 5:24 PM UTC
She dares
I AM
wee hour
but tree
in Berkeley
yet dawn
only wager
their firm
with rose
in our
court another
year that
Romulus take
these places
and spaces
in term
with harm
May 19, 2018
May 19, 2018 at 8:18 AM UTC
only a single word... koniak,
and then there's cognac,
so the g replaces the n...
the "greek" aesthetic in roman
of "c" & "k"
that was too obvious...
the equation of cross-eye (zez)?
in greek reads as:
( ε, η,
θ, φ
o, ω ) (υ)
some orthodox "paedophilia": watch it...
avoiding the grapheme of the vowels
adam & eve (æ)... is just about as bad
as satan and zzz (ß)... i.e. the case of god.
graphemes are, so ******* unique!
to think that germans invented
a consonant grapheme, to counter the roman
twins: romulus (œ) & remus (æ)...
to conjure up a grapheme, is harder still,
than to simply conjure up distinctive informative
(double-adjective, with the missing and)
indicatives... i.e. diacritical markings.
p.s. brandy; and someone took
to the audacity of adding an acute iota: í
into the matrix of: if only we had graphemes,
i.e. í made it's way to suppose eta (η)...
wait a minute... that doesn't exactly fit
the prefix modus of giving letters names...
rather than what the romans did, "singing"
them, i.e. o omicron? that's a noun...
but the romans? oh...
that's just a syllable;
**** me... find me a hundred castratos to sing it!
May 24, 2017
May 24, 2017 at 9:50 AM UTC
"Praefectus,
What does it mean to grow?" Said R & R
For I am Hellas - Helios,
But you shall be Rhṓmē.
"Is it just to take a name?"
For all of this is taking?
You, I shall name Romulus.
For you I share nothing.
For it means brutality.
"What might you give me?"
For all of this is given.
You, I shall name Remus.
For you I give favor.
For it means kindred spirit.
"Where are you going?"
You two are nearly yet full grown.
I have given a verdict,
Remus is to lead the people.
"That isn't fair! This is an injustice!"
Come back with me to Hellas,
If that really is your perspective,
Your family shall still welcome you home.
"I deserve this! All of this!"
Deserve what?
Who are you who I named?
Who are you who I raised?
"I reject these ways!"
Good. You may still yet come to understand them.
Heed my decision. When have I ever acted against your interest?
Praefectus is the most honorable of professions, I sense no honor in you.
"That's your fault! Your perception! Your perspective!"
You are still very young, Romulus.
The brutal mind can incapacitate,
Both problem & thinker.
You 𝘤𝘢𝘯 choose to be either.
"You speak in riddles, fool! No one can understand you!"
Your brother understands fine.
In fact, he understands them perfectly.
For your brother, not you, has wisdom.
"I will **** you!"
Save it, child. I told you, I'm leaving.
Heed my decision. When have I ever acted against your interest?
You are not fit to be a leader.
What can one who learns everything
Always still have a chance not to know?
To be unbiased, to be impartial.
Apr 24, 2025
Apr 24, 2025 at 4:19 AM UTC
the high priestess sits still
on her throne
her mottled hands beginning to sprout veins
Like the roots of an ageless tree
her eyes sinking low to the earth, lids heavy with sleep
the abstract temple, mismatched in quilted sheets and mangled ceramic fragments
encompassing her victims, the children brothers Romulus and Remus
who play under a drizzled chorus of shattered glass
and winter hesitates as she raises her roots to a flame of Hell
fuels the pyre with white snakeroot and , suckling from the Jack-in the pulpit
feeds the ashen embers once again
Oct 24, 2018
Oct 24, 2018 at 6:48 PM UTC
The Citizens danced
Romulus cried
Centurions posed
in Legions wide
“The world is ours”
they said in glee
“And death to those
who don’t concede”
The past unyielding
future loaned
The present flew
like David’s stone
Their party ending
candles burnt
With spoils poisoned
lessons spurned
And history writes
that in a day…
What once was Rome
was cast astray
Whose legend carved
in stone reminds
What young Narcissus
hoped to find
The glory that once
ruled the world
Now left in rubble
myth unfurled
As time awaits
to stalk our path
That wolf inside
—as history laughs
(Villanova Pennsylvania: October, 2018)
Oct 31, 2018
Oct 31, 2018 at 3:10 AM UTC