Amore Mortis

His name was still a mystery to me;
I had not learned to mutter it
Upon drifting off to sleep
Before I had learned to know him
In the most impersonal of beds.
It was not a Woodland dream
As I had supposed,
It was a concrete ground
Where I was disposed
And held bleeding where no Gladiolus
Could ever break through.

My knees curled, enclosing my chest,
Keeping my heart from slipping out
Of my pelvic girdle; my lips
Muttering below my broken breath
Poetry of a violent Horace hue;
His name, his name I still
Could not know.
He picked the leaves from my hair
And kissed at my tears,
The ones that turn dirt into mud
And mud into mosh pits.

I flinched from his touch,
Unable to look him in the eye,
Unable to swallow the sight
Of the sword he stuck me with.
It was big;
Too big for my porous hole,
The one that matched the burnt edges
Of the pulsing abrasion inside my chest.
A massive, rounded Gladius
Thrust into a butter knife’s sheath…
We didn’t fit like puzzle pieces;
We didn’t fit at all.

He let me cry while he dressed.
I was catatonic, empty,
My body bare and broken;
Breasts bitten and bruised
By a mouth weaponed with braces;
Thighs reddened and pumping;
Back sore and battered
From a concrete ground
In which I laid like cobblestone
On an ancient, untouched path.

The grains on the fence were my spectacle
Where I watched my every affair
On a molding screen.
I sobbed against the Coliseum
Collapse; a cement ode to the Romans I hate.
I was not Greek in my maiden’s losing.
I was a Caesar,
Inheriting my family’s epilepsy;
Here’s to the first convulsion:
Sieze the Day and Suffer the Night!
We fucked as Rome burned!
Here’s to the fall of my empire,
To my innocence no more.

His name was still a mystery to me;
I had not learned to mutter it
Upon drifting off to sleep
Before I had learned to know him
In the most impersonal of beds.
His name was still a mystery to me
As I opened my eyes to realize
I was only dreaming…
Amore Mortis
With my heart, I wander a fool,
A fool crossing the Rubicon,
Returning only to cross it again.