Some brutal nation subjugating neighbours
Stripping naked, upbraiding
Finally raping and hanging captors
Not only way but their way
Inherited from violent forebears
Inherited bearing becomes weighted burden
Ass asked to bear until death, tare of legacy
Horseback archers rare skills surpassing
Indeed, anpiels in blazing!
By amazing speed melding
It seem’d, with wielded weapons, spun mithrils.
Gilt conveyance graced with Inanna’s painted face
Spiralbound ivory frames, at corners housing flameflecked gems
Taking the field lupine Sennacherib and fifty three times men
Arrows gelled with venom slathered in salival death
Each breath spent cursing, enemies to all Eden
Despising freedom’s every seedling.
Berserkers bowing wolf king peacock
Divers temper movable as the ridden cockhorse’s tracks
What lacks in Mercury exalts in red Mars
His word scarring brand
His band land’s scourge
Discouraging travel and trade
Destroying terrains by torch
Leaving behind rainless plains further scorched
Endorsing hatred in every name and guise
Scalding Adam’s Sons, harrying Edom.
Sennacherib feasts during battle
Death dulcifying apple segments, like red-rounded lunula
Speckled eggs eaten off an armless odalisque’s legs
Odd, malformed concubines of a world-tired conqueror
Women and men splayed bring to pleasure donkeys
Some bearing forth children half-bay, born to graves
Whiskey brought from Ogygia, which he briskly sips at until tipsy
Falling chair to bed, one tenth of those he wedded waiting
Eager to sate his titanic lusts.
Gales briskly tracing faces of gyring buzzards
Blustering against his summer tent’s walls
Multicoloured striations, like a thing painted
Pentagons couple-coloured foolmotley rolandfarter
Turtle’s shell harbouring stained glass wonders
Culminating to a minaret
King’s grandest lazaretto, on high bluff overlooking throes
Casting force careless, stones into oceans thrown
Skips uncounted
Tired of bounty yet abounding amount
Has not counted him satisfied, nor slaked brute ambition.
A redoubt stately and vain, fain envy inducing
Mirthful to him as it is menacing to attendants
Its floor sod, earth itself
Letting his chasuble’s dragging hem turn dirt
Which he herded sheep over, once
What felt another lifetime ago
All let go, water flowing but forward.
Appearing to himself from the tent’s corners
He had ferried here myriad busts
From kingdom’s interior hauled, with difficulty
To the perilous frontline, that he would indulge
Even his most needless need kens his divinity.
He Assyrian Sennacherib
Whom Byron described a wolf, cutlass-toothed
Whose crib a fierce Mac Tíre’s teat
Whose seat high Assyria
Feared by warlike nations
His voice clanking chains, angel-enraging
Hell’s tendering his cavalries mustering, thunderous
Mustard yellow throat of doublet, scarlet below
Rousing singularly, placid minds enflaming with warlike tendency
He is delivered, an Ifrit with fire imprinting battlelines
Stoking rivalries between tribes, reddening the Euphrates for Nergal.
Delivering a speech
Moving slowly, deliberately
To supreme ovation
No wasted rotation
Sleeves yawning open ovals, silken cavemouths
Vast carriage chariot arrayed in golden livery
Winding train like wagons parading new trades routes
Worshipful beard, a Lear in aspect
Curly, red-flecked black and trained to a fork
Like a place of folkloric devildealing.
All war’s rules repeals, ruled by greedy Mars
His armies’ steels thirst to bleed infidels
First through the breach, delving over corpses rubbled-shrouded
In the houses of foreign gods despoiling goods-laden altars
Sundering exalted statues and assaulting holy virgins
For use only by Jove and chosen acolytes, high priests
Pray to the bodiless ankles of smashed marbles
Weeping, marvels an age surviving tossed aside like garbage.
When considerate, pulls beard’s frays
Phrase to lips presaged by dour countenance
Feared pronouncements the rout of principals
Palanquin pulled by red-eyed foals, kin to Diomedes’ mares
Gross throne footed by foes’ skulls
Skin still peeling from some, sun defaced
Blood spatters the stair thereto.
Granted courage and strength by terrible Gods
Chaotes in mighty motions alike to a Charybdis
Daring’s surfeit every naked surface of their bodies
Riding into battle, warriors without armour
Save armlets and protection-bestowing wode spiral
Coming army unlike lacking rank, banner, livery
Ants akin in disorganised harmony.
Alchemisland 
Leave a comment