Espionage on a Young God - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 8 – Miriam

which dragged poor John at last to anchor

with me under high Mount Athos—

yes, I had some surreptitious business there.

fitted Mount Olympos with a furnace

sulphurous enough to keep the sun

inflamed by night and warm the fingers

of the gods before and after

their unfinishable family fights,

of Athos and that Zeus left

odds and ends there he'd outgrown:
two dozen wooden blocks

carved with the first initials

of the great philosophers,
then there beneath Chrysippos, Psamtik, Hómēros,

three pages of scratched notes,

a godling's wishful ode about his father,
At the Elysian retreat of Kronos

Where soothing breezes off the bay

Are scented by the sighing of a spring
—that sort of thing.

Underneath, a note in someone else's hand,

and I slipped young Zeus's discards

underneath the lining of my cloak,

a creature left there sentinel accosted me.

Panoptes? One of the Titânes?

I wasn't up on Greek mythology;

it was an ugly multi-headed pup

with serpent hair and harpy claws,

a chimera of more beasts

than I cared to stay and tally up.

displaying ginger hair, then black;

a rounder nose, then aquiline;

full lips, then thin;

and hightailed back to where John waited

praying and the crew, thank God,

had some experience with quick escape:
as two strong arms with iron hands

restored me to the trireme's deck,

the bow already nuzzled at the waves,

and my pursuer drew up short,

unwilling to risk getting wet,

or else forbidden to desert those sands;

whomever the chimera gave report to

thought:
Let's play it safe from here on in

and place a ban on every female

human, monstrous, even avian.
Taking avgolemono off the menu

was small price to pay

to guard against the Thief-Witch

slithering ashore again.

You were the chief god

in the neighborhood,

renowned for your seductions.

Not the Jewish girls, but still...”
“You thought your Yahweh, Miriam—

aka your Aramaic Alaahaa—

would protect you? Was He such a bargain?

And the Lord said to Moses, Kill all the male children, and every female

who has known man by lying with him; and divide the 32,000 women

who have not lain with a man between the soldiers and the congregation.'

Now, that's real Numbers!

Is the panderer and voyeur somehow purer than the lover?
“I ask you, Zeus.

Were there others?”

Why dig into that wound so deep?

Jew, Persian, Greek,

what difference does it make?

The only intercourse

concerns a pussy and a dick.

a full-grown man for three millennia!

The only thing I've scorned

to cast a lustful eye on

all my years, as I told Job once,

is the battle-horse.

Imagine trying to poke that in the keister?

You Jewish girls are fierce, agreed—

but take my word for it, you're nothing next to

an infuriated steed!”
“Don't bother being crass.

It doesn't put me off.

I asked a question. Answer it.”
“There were a couple, yes.”
“I want their names.”
“You don't need the list.

When I first saw you

in the window reading Tanakh

I was struck by how your brow creased

just so. You know how to read

between the lines, I know.”

I want to hear it from your mouth,

no double-speak.”
“Abram's Sarai.

He knew too, of course;

that's why he loaded up

that pack horse

with split wood

and went to give the boy

back to his maker.

Michal, King David's first—

she found him crass

and hid the teraphim,

his household gods, in bed.

And then of course

your aunt Elizabeth.

You and the Baptist knew

you're more than cousins—

why I was so pleased

with him when he embraced Yeshua

that day by the Jordan.

No—not mercy fucks,

if that's what you're imagining,

though childless woman do have

a particular get-up-and-go.”

At this point, you'll do anything to take

away the luster from Yeshua.

'All glory to my other son,

the one without his head!'”
“May I remind you, Miriam,

they both are dead?”

there's not much difference.”

the same idea.”

Just don't suggest

those limp wrists

come from me!”

than the limp dick I remember.

What an introduction that was

to the pleasures

of the opposite gender!”
“You got pregnant!

So your womb made no complaint

about the sex!”
“Go back, Zeus—

back into the inner sanctum

of my mind, to where you hide.

I've bloody matters to attend to

that I can't accomplish

with you smirking by my side.

Go back, and don't return.

It's time for Arab ships to sink

and minarets to burn.

Reverie - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 10 – Zeus/Miriam:
“Which passage was it

you were reading when we met?”

I remember Moses fondly.

That sweet spring he summoned

waters Petra to this day.

His brother Aaron's tomb there is a favorite haunt.

Don't you just love that scene in Egypt

where they all throw staves down,

which turn into snakes, and Aaron's eats

the vipers from the Pharaoh's priests'?

Combining war and sorcery does get me off!”

a Middle Age where Germans' galdralag

confounds your straight-laced warriors

at Tours and for the following eight centuries

till Cristovão da Gama's pure crusaders

march ashore ex machina to liberate

the Christian Solomonic Dynasty of Ethiopia,

and blunderbuss jihadis' heads at Massawa.”
“You call those butchers saints?”
“Annihilating infidels,

by any name would smell as sweet.”

dear Miriam,

dear Miriam...”

Relic Hunter, Mount Koressos - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 11- Urania:
A strange blizzard raged;

when the cutthroat centurion

reached the crest of the mountain

he looked more like a friendly snowman

than abominable Roman.
But if he found one of the artifacts

Augusta Helena searched for,

she would present him to her son,

and Constantinus Imperator

would reward him with a primus-pilus,

if not more.

a thinly ice-skinned spring,

some savage-tended olive trees

that all had seen much better days.

a pathway through the underbrush,

and ambition warred with cold

as half his mind said Go!

and half said No!
Two hours later

looking like a bush

on which a drift had fallen

he came upon three cave mouths

on a limestone face,

thrice-lifesized statuary

flanked by colonnades

from which wept melting ice;

within was something warm.

He had struck gold.

rebuilt, renamed Konstantinoupolis

and hallowed by the Rod of Moses

and the One True Cross,

raised up on the rubble

of forsaken Aphrodite's temple,
crowded out of doors

to watch the triumph of the lord

both of the heavens and the earth,
hoi polloi accustomed

to parades of thousands of Sarmatians

bound in chains, hundreds of elephants

queued tail-in-trunk and ridden

by brown ostrich-plumed mahouts,
and Vandal girls

without a stitch of clothes

bound for the auction block
could not contain their wonder

at the sight of the gargantuan bed

that undergirt the passions

of Zeus Thunderer and Earth-Shaker

through the Gate of Myriandrion

and down the regal Mese

past Theotokos-in-Petra

and Christ Panepoptes,

past the Forum of the Bulls

to splendid Hagia Sophia
trailed by seven sarkophágoi

in which, the heralds cried,

lay seven pagan gods so old

they had no names

a solitary Arab man

enmeshed in spiders' silk

who seemed to dream,

his eyeballs sliding

back and forth beneath his lids,

but whom no one could wake

neither with cymbals nor with shouts:

and his mother smiled and waved

down from their perch

above the palace crowd,

theirs and Christ’s

now perfectly impregnable.

Cogito Ergot Sum (Lourdes, A.D. 778) - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 13 – Clio:
The Moor Marat's fortress at Lourdes besieged

by Franks, his fishhawk sweeps

and drops a huge trout at his feet.
He'll use the fish to hoodwink Charlemagne

into believing they have more than moldy grain

to eat,

when there appears

recently Christianized figure of Dana,

Celtic queen of the sky

etched onto Roman pottery

alongside Zeus and Antiope—
who commands him to yield

and be baptized.

one mile east

of Champion in Kewaunee

County off Highway K

eighteen

miles from Green Bay)

a year after a miller's daughter made

Lourdes a Marian sensation,

Mary dropped in on the United States

via the mind of a Belgian immigrant of 28,

while she too carried sacks of moldy grain

to and from a gristmill in the altered state

of ignus sacer, sacred fire—ergot in the brain.
Adele Brise

asked the apparition

in the trees

in a white dress

with yellow sash

around its waist,

stars on her ravishing

blonde tresses,

who she was.
“Ik ben de koningin

van de hemel—

Je suis la reine du ciel—

do you speak Flemish,

English,

or Walloon?

I'm queen of the sky.

Call the children in this

wild country of America!

Teach

modern apparition-scene

investigators

find no evidence of heresy

or fraud and a long history

of cures, conversions

and signs—

the site within the twenty

mile swathe around Green Bay

untouched by the Peshtigo fire

ruled a miracle.

Bishop David Ricken says

in an office

littered

with

parking lot and gives the green

light to a Good Helpers Association,

the Sister Adele level

giving $10

and the Our Lady level $20

says Mariologist

Bishop Ricken agrees.

For eighteen

years

Karen Tipps was a volunteer

with her husband Steve.

says Theresa

Vandermause as she arrives

for her weekly

visit with her friend Judy.

I feel

her presence, as if she's

really

and truly

listening to me.

Katastrophē in Kōnstantinoúpolis – Muse's Advisory, Feb. 16 - Polimnia
All seven boys together rolled onto their left sides

and the populace screamed as one and ran behind doors

as paynim horsemen streamed through the gate.
A jinn seized the flag of Artemis's crescent and Miriam's star

from the long-dried fingerbones of Constantine the Great

and the newly-bloodied wrists of the Marble Emperor,

his crooked teeth packed tightly, always, with vervain:

the Ottomans renamed it Ay Yıldız and took it for their own.
The man in the spider-silk robe who seemed to dream, awoke;

the skin of his face shone in splendor; he cried:

Replied the Marble Emperor:

crammed with Byzantines praying for protection:

Turks graded them according to the price they'd fetch,

and the great city's patroness shivered with regret.

empty

at the palace

or

to ape cain

portals to

fresh birth

places

where your son is.

Demi-gods

always bore me.

or racial purist

but I do hate it

when Zeus

visits Earth

as a cunt-tourist.

It embarrasses

both of us.

half-breeds

themselves,
but why daydream

about their

mighty deeds?
Yeshua's likely dead,

same as the rest;

when did anyone last

hear from Theseus?

but you're no more

than mortal too:
Zeus pays off Atropos,

but when the

baksheesh stops...

Or has your head

been turned by all

those former Jews

beseeching you?—
Star of the Sea!

Destroyer of Heresy!

Ever-Virgin!

Co-Redemptrix!

Most Holy Teacher!

Queen of Heaven!
Eternity isn't

past plus future:

it's an indifferent

state of mind.

it went about as well

as I expected.

I'd thought just maybe

she might side with me,
but no: to her, Yeshua

was an ordinary man,

I should accept his death,

go back to Nazareth

and mourn,
and you

should go on doing

as you've always done.
She really is your sister,

if only distantly a wife:

she thinks mankind

should give the gods

their hearts, but not

the other way around.

your upbringing

or lack thereof.

It's dog eat dog where

you came from,

not one scrap shared.

people counted on

when times got tough;

he wasn't simply in it

for the fat, smoke, blood.
He exposed you Twelve

as omni-gluttons with

stomachs unbuttoned

and egos never sated:

the mammoth and tapeworm
Hubris.

That's why you all must

be eliminated.

Memory - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 20 - Zeus to Miriam:
You want to hear about my girls?

Don't look at me like that.

It's true,

their mom is Memory my aunt,

but no one gives a shit

if they're a tiny bit inbred.

They'll deal with it.

Nobody's paying them to not have tails

or Habsburg lips.
My own memory of her is faint.

It was a long way back

and she habitually burgled

all my reminiscence of our sex

to relish it twofold herself.
What a lover that made her!
Each of our nine nights

more rousing than the last!

when I reached the point where—

lacking recollection of the highlights—

I just wandered off.

Lovemaking's really not enough

without some context, backdrop.

What have they really done?

They're dainty lady-fingers

with no knuckles and no fists.

What's beauty truly but

the tan on pestilence's face?

Without the knockwurst,

just a lightly toasted bun?

grace passes through them

as effectlessly as breaths

tiptoeing through a flute.

She hasn't so much gone away

as hovers in the background.

but she did

have the most beautiful hair.

Gauntlet - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 21 – Miriam to Zeus:
Why kindle proxy wars

at Tours, Byzantium?

Do you lack moxie

to bear arms yourself?

macho thunderbolts

but did you ever once stay

Artemis's breast-shaped bow?

who has one gentle side,

one cruel. Come test

your theory of superiority.

unleash your roar.

You'll find the depth

of my resistance eerie.

melodious as Mary Oliver's verse?

what makes a battle bloody.

be a special pain and special pleasure.

Zeus knows exactly where Yeshua is

Not Milton's epic,

where every idol—

Zeus says,

The fresh corpse stirs

Hephaistos says, 

“Yeshua, son,” Zeus says, 

“These fingernails are going fu-manchu,”

“You can't just play things all by ear,” 

“Whatever,”