Before Actium in Egypt
Fifteen years purgatory for Marc Antony, among bird-headed statuary
Drinking whilst playing kingly chance games, discipline eroding steadily
Telling his men they must continue trusting him unto triumph
“Jupiter will smite their ships, Set having sewn confusion among them
We will feed them to the Nile, Sobek thence casts judgement
Fear not but feel as cutthroat wolves should for you are that
Coming back our prows will hack through bloodspattered latitutudes
We will ferry to Rome new attitudes, away with prunes and rude institutions
We will teach them to leave their bodies with water, to meet Ra-Jupiter
We will leave a blasted heath where his landed armies camp
We will leave floating planks to mark where we cleft clean his fleet
We will like animate fire sweep Earth clean of Octavian, these feet”
Antony points to those sandals worn still in Greek style since Ptolemy
Who in zeal for foreknowledge left his body to sweep Akashic aisles searching for unread steles marked by intact seals
“will tattoo again on Rome’s streets
Mark these and other words as decrees, here here!”
Resounding cheers, a brief appearance of readiness
But his troops trudge through his halls like men sentenced to imminent death
Applause leaves him empty but he continues on with gravity,
“We will descend on this pup upstart like Caesar on the pirates!”
His Thoth-scribe’s pen scraping as told, alas wasting papyrus.
Moon in Leo
Enter Lover, with worry wasting
His face turning, she embraces from behind
Egyptian Queen’s fingers elfinthin running through Antony’s hair
By Osiris-faced braziers expulsing sawing flames she is conjured slim-waisted and tastefully regaled, she who does not wait: waiflike warlike wifely
Ne’er losing wildness, feline wiliness embracing Captain lacing thighs
Legs twined stencils for divine hermaphrodites
Aphrodite’s love sightless, lust beyond lust
Dwindling stars arcing overhead as garnet-spoked chariots
Hours left in this life, perhaps they know it
He calls on divine powers of Rome and Egypt, asking rare providence
She is prudent to remain quiet, he is in such habits lately
Fidgeting with cuffs, speaking aloud to Minerva in mirrors where stirs no visage save his own
His beckoning digit straightens, highlighting fading light
Two horned lanterns their lurid, impossible love born under
Before their very eyes lovelight vanishing implacably like scent fleeing dying flowers
Marc Antony cannot meet Cleopatra’s eyes, maskless in the land of disguises.
In infrequently-entered rooms inebriated, staggering past priestly pictures
Friezes showing that land’s evil Daggial, higher lifting his curved dagger
They hear a lilting Nile seething nearby in Bayou sleepstealing heat
Birds crying like teething babes defiantly proclaiming virility whilst declaiming the ability of rivals
Anarchic tribes ribald barbary apes trifling
Below sky-flicked tamarisks whose limp wrists in this thirsty, arid land of exiles recalls anorexic lavender.
Antony sitting like a seneschal on a shallow shelf surrounded by plush cushions, mesh betwixt
Eunuchs mixing myth-unlocking drinks, boiling concoction seeming impotable
What seem like eyeballs floating therein
A dream key from Megiddo’s magma, void-aporting portal to megatherion
Imbibes a dram or more of acrid admix, acidic in his tract
Man commander who lacks nothing cannot relax but by taxing intaking of chemyst-rack vintages
Bathed in speckled light through a grille, his best gleoman begins like a storm’s first wind.
His winnowing breath spread through many windows like little butter over a lot bread
By senescence lost some essence of itself, yet impression was not lessened.
The bard with both eyes having is neither a Homer nor a Dante, but he speaks of these things: Hades and death, beautiful ladies cursed time and again by jealous Hera for their part in Zeus’ infidelities
Ancient hearths hearts stirred to startle sparking sparkling anew, dispelling long-lingering darkness where Anubis looms.
Reminders of proud Alexander, whose hands cupped the world’s face
Emperors and bandits alike pilgrimage, one whose light outstood
Hooded orderlies ne’er betray his obelisk’s location
Chaos King’s leukós armour arrayed in cloisters at stations on avenues bearing his name in Alexandria
Succoured by handsome demigods many in marble-halled Babylon
Alexander was too a man of letters, who need not endure yet enjoyed lessons
As he enjoyed lessening populations the World’s breadth round
Taught knowledge by Aristotle, later learned his mother part-Goddess
Alexander amused by muse-met gleomen confused by omens, what myths meant
Poisoned cup supped boldly coldly closed ram-clothed champion’s eyes
Whose archambition shook ages; in Alexandria his lost grave.
Alchemisland 
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