Peering up from the precipice, a cyclops! – a
Many-fanged and mono-eyed beast,
Flesh a sickly sea-shell and putrid yellow as a
Series of pustules pulse rivulets of green-black blood,
Staining scarred surfaces and shadowing engorged strength.
Reaffirmed grip on haft,
I plunge the sticked-spike a shade-shy of horizontal,
Missing the mark obvious but finding purchase,
Shattering clavicle and spraying sinew in a perverse sort
Of macabre rainbow arc, yet met with instant,
Abject terror: spear now not merely stuck but gripped
By mine beholden nemesis, and he shifts, twists the
Leverage and I, trained in the art of never-surrender-never,
Have not his primitive power to resist and thus fall,
Giving way to laws of momentum – and the world shudders.
Eyes-wide as fist-eclipses-sun, a quick scramble,
Desperate-probing-reflexive grab for the half-arm length stabber,
Unsheathe, roll, aim and ******:
A scoring glance, slicing more pox and pus than
Bone or gristle, but desired effect achieved:
Nemesis rails, howling, orb clenched and pointing skyward,
Arms guarding reflexive at bloodied torso, leaving precious,
Glorious goal unguarded:
A backwards roll, leaning into the earth like Atlas,
I push, spring, and the world gleams in high-contrast
Blood-red and silvered-steel-sword as I’m propelled skyward –
Blade-and-hand acting in concert, a conductor in a symphony
Of prospective gore seeking to punish the cyclopean’s dissonance,
I plunge deep, scoring a bassonic rumble from
His jugular and cacophonic crackings as his cerebral
Column gives way to the superior song.
His shuttered eye now open as he slumps, falling to the
Ground ilke a dead god, it develops a strange sort of calm,
As if he’s hearing his own song of slaying – but that
Sizzling, that pig-eating-slop sound, that wasn’t my song –
That must be his, and awareness dawns as adrenal sets –
Blinded by blood and battle, I’d neglected to heed
The refuse of the beast’s bilious eruptions,
Blown back from the force of my blade, and now, immersed
By the nauseating, liquid-green mass, I am devoured from
Without.
I lay now, eyes alternating skies, and weep that I
Am sapped entirely of strength enough for noble suicide:
I shall die here, propped astern like a failed Atlas, a
Boneless, gibbering mash of grit, guts, and warm, soupy glory,
muted and deafened to the howlsong from above of vultures.
