Elven lemon sky Ionian Sea
Roman killing Roman, Juno’s griefful heaving stirred seas
Flux disease and desertion distilled Antony’s ranks to truest champions
Still they reckoned a reckonable force
Skipper swearing fingers to his lips whffffphhhs signalling swift ship’s arrival
Assuring no rival lyingly flies friendly flags, wolf in sheepen rag
Long boathook like snake-choking crozier drags him alongside
Given long eye, cornea adjudicating trial
As if skin’s lay unlinear outed wearer’s sin
At prow flyblown meats propitiate Mars, who never treats, never concedes defeat, and meets steel with steel.
Changing sides changing tides
At morning’s fog sun-atomiced like vaprous vomit gulleying from a wyvern’s gullet
Goldenrod butterscotch arches twisted from plated oriflammes
Featherfalling alternation of arrow-struck anpiels golded on urns obsidiel and given heroes
In battle blooddrunk, to drink from and think home and love
Within a shield, above its strap, gashes rudely graven, abacusing the slain.
Day’s epilogue none knowing
Half more Marc’s manpower turncloaking to his antipode, Octavian woeful
As yet Augustness lacking, like a Virgo-feeling born under Scorpio
To see Roman gore haunting foreign shores, supplanted by Roman sword
How far hath an eagle fallen since bold Scippio conquered Carthage, sundering idols child-eating Tophet broken
Mayhaps swooping merely, wildest kingliest wiliest of gyre’s denizens
Loyal to coin only, coffer’s courageous profit-hungry coffin dodgers
Currency shortfall currently surfeit, Eagle-unfit as legionaries outfitted erronesouly
In desperation claiming onserously their nation one disavowed Fortuna, their rut judged incorruptible death sentence
We will not sit by idly here waiting to die for Marc Anthony’s Caesar fantasies
The loyal shout over at them, curses and maledictions, derisive sleights
Gunwale railing elbow, leaning over offering sarcastic thanks
Planks leap at trooper’s tramping, together since Gaul shown now prodigal.
As in Herakles’ day, every hour labour invested
When skies sable, satyrs taught wards by Silenus
able centaurs Silphium-scented, sent by Nessus to affect divinity afore mortals
Emerge from hidden cradles by corporeal profanation unstained
Piping playful in natural states
Faraway madrigals only axemen, merfolk and mariners hear
Only Marc Antony here, he thinks
Rock he drops plops, sinks
Counts ripples, ten twelve rings echoing
Something singing, siren chiming his ears only
Hearing eighty thousand foot chattering, they would die in battle for him
They would die even for his whims.
Everyone wishes to know me
Robed in might and glory
Old story chapter
Shape-shifting abactor, haranguing Zeus’ cattle
Most lonely upon land’s
Old now
This ship’s bow I could low lie, smuggled across the Hellespont stowed in tack barrel
His reflected face wrinkled by waves
Spies his hands; they are aged.
Reflecting, decades spent an Egyptian elect
Prefect pyramids, wily ailurophilian sphinxes
Palm-damp rail, many grasping hands spanned past
Alike stood on war’s eve, intaking land’s last sight.
It has been amazing, if he is not to deceive himself
Depraved has been, a million times the little demise
Pleasured strange ways Romans would never devise
He has been deified, shown mysterious stations of verididerm Osiris
His foliate crown and sisterwife Isis.
Baying wolves forgotten forests north the bay
Tonight creatures gathering
Lupine preachers blathering
Foggy, one thing clear
Defeat is on the way.
Watchman speaks
Bell screeching
“The fleet is on its way!”
Octavian flanked by campaign veterans, wise afield
Point of steel, tip of spear
Red sea foaming
Roman glasses spy horizon-rounding Egyptian flags
Like lemmings dying sequentially, last compelled, shaft-decorated.
“Posterity will us endure
Made pure by surety
Of cause, so of heart
From our enemies, leagues apart
Toward death we hurtle fast
Know that uncast ears
Years ere shall cheer
Our deed’s hearing
Seizing with derring
Momentum unerring
Any unpromised day’s prize
Pride us tithething highest
We, us” pointing to his Doric greybeards, his lush youths in rusted lorica
With whom he stands equal “are Rome’s people
Feather, taloned, as eagles
Gleoman will speak, repeating our deeds!”
Second September
Deck swept with ember
End of potential Eastern-tinged Empire, smiling from either end of earth
Longing for Rome as Hercules after Hylas
A decade of rivalry climaxed at Actium
Whether we are actors in a play of our own making, or act on behalf of deities, none can say
None can say either with surety the number slain
Bloodstained decks as after blood rains
Floating frames of shapes in flames
Ship skeletons like malformed armatures
Ruinmarking diminutive armada upon tabletop vast
Who ruminates on such; die are cast.
Cattle are threatened: death for leaving
His closest prove swindlers
Deceiving him in fleeing
Numbers dwindle
Not yet Winter, we can still win
Marc says, half to himself
When a wolf is surrounded, instinct ne’er flounders
Calling his generals closer, who have fallen back
Slaps his extended inner elbow, calling attention to his wolf tattoo
“Rome is the she-wolf, queen, and we her pack.
This Rome Octavian sails for is the dagger wobbling in Caesar’s back,
Casting cruciform shadow.
My Rome is a city of palaces! Noble citizens glad to live there
Every denizen heavensent
I represent such as they resent, they have sent ships to silence me
I would marry East to West and West to East, Empire’s sunlight without cease!”
They abact themselves.
Slivers of light pierce the hold, full of ballast and ballistae bolts
Last living treading water
Slaughter guttering from opened portions of spearstruck corpses
Kicking to ‘scape oblivion, signalling to sharks already well alarumed
Blood by jarsful summons the harmful
Flotsam armful enough to float on
Matchbox boat to cross an ocean, as Mycenean Perseus infloated; ranging manger.
Dead such no golden fleece could effect healing
Dead water confined Antony’s fleet
Captive, they are smashed to kindling.
Egyptian captains unable to contain pagan cowardice sailed out of ramming range toward sunfired horizon lines
Tried and found wanting by an empire in war
Antony climbs away from battle little more than a pirate
A privateer, a sword for hire
He would not be given trial
They have painted him vile, of violent tendency and indigent temperament
A brute lacking tenderness
A Brutus born again
But what of his famous romance
That swarthy flesh his olive hands grasped
Which crafty Jupiter’s grasping hands had fashioned.
Alchemisland 
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