Alchemisland

Aquila at nighttime zenith

His toga peeled back appealingly, revealing

Antinous’s yet-congealing future features

His fallow chin without shadow of beard’s hint

Hadrian’s preying gaze ere surveillant

Signalled a willingness to be availed

Of; he the idle cat

His captor the long rows of well bedded mint.

By dint his status, a rustic

Below but not a slave

His submission seeds an ill-fitting craving in this Caesar-Hadrian.

His muscles, his bulk, his musk – oh, the Unconquered Sun flutters,

Which woe wishes unto conquered others.

The Emperor whose mind should drift to thoughts of higher kind

Are fixed finding applicable endings for tiresome, lovesick lines:

Wringing my hands, ringing bells of gladness at your advance

At last some advantage slams into this famished fantasist

Antinous, my heart’s continuance

The sinuous contrivance of your sinless hide

Wild-eyed, he does not know that he will die

But he will and by lover’s strike.

Over the side, kerplunk

The Nile’s fanged lungs

Consumed what royal anger left of his looks.

That symmetry remarked upon once as the result

Of union twine exultant divine and mortalkind,

How else should one arrive at such a wealth of potential prides?

Surely he was that, pride and tactful champion of his Bithynian tribe.

Your prettiness will see you deified, long survived

Courtesy of your shortened life.

The curtains close with a still lightful sky

The youth’s form deformed by fatal intercession; becoming Osiris.

Red as rubbed eyelids

The ichor squidding from his pilotless pod’s skidding

His frying eyes unrenew binding time’s rough sinews

And lost youth impossibly continues.