O Come All Ye - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 23 – Euterpe

See that woman back there

   “...Sojourner Truth and Carrie Nation walk into a bar with hatchets glinting underneath their coats; demand to see the cook. An Arab native to the Hawran hills, a beard tattooed on chin and jaw, blue frog's-eyes on her upper lip, emerges grinning from the back and sits down in a booth with them...”

   "Muse? Muse! Hey, Muse!" she cries.
"I'm dying over here!
Another seltzer water please, no fruit.
   You plucked a tom hawk's wing
and put his feather in your cap?
   You poked a woman-hater's eye out 
with a Stars of Egypt fountain pen?
Thanks, tough girl, keep the change.
   Maybe the Stanley Cup is on?"

   “...pull hatchets from beneath their coats and start to chop the bar to splinters, crying 'Temperance! Sufferance! Tolerance!'  Out runs the plump Muscati cook, a sextant etched between her eyes...”

  "Goddam it all!” she cries again. "Muse! 
   Sorry. Make this a White Russian."

Catastrophe - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 28 – Polimnia:
Disaster's thin legs will outrun Pheidippides

and the litters of weighty victories:

an old witch pushes past them

on the narrow rut

and caterwauls into the brush

that the house of many-breasted Artemis,

Wonder of the World or not,

had tumbled down, its altar smashed

after the Crank of Patmos burst inside

and lifted voice and arms

to cast the pagan demons out,

and everyone in Ephesus

now wept, praised Christ, or was in flight.

Amid the dust

of such earth-shaking force majeure,

the Apocalypt

had prophesied hard Goths, within a century—

and in the second hundredyear, Herostratus

(chaser of fame at any cost, punished with

death and deathly crime to speak his name)—

twice more the rebuilt temple would enflame.

Then he plucked a listless octopus

from an awestruck fishwife's hamper,

and escaped!
Before the murmur of Miriam's spring

caressed their ears,

their noses sipped a stench

of more-than-fetid polpi,

at once

was true.

over the dew-drenched earth that covered John's remains.

and the steam from boiling millet

billows from the plane of dawn light

slicing though the shutters.

kicking and throwing elbows like an epileptic!

I had to flee to keep from getting hit.”
“My dreams were full of storms and charms.”
“Come, eat. We have that bit of salvaged gevrek,

simmered millet, olives, linden tea.”

His form had changed and Miriam stepped back.

This even linden-flower wasn't going to help.

at his mistake.

The passenger

he'd thought

the day before

too frail for flight

had brought

the City of Artemis

to its knees

and made escape.

their passage back

to Patmos stalled.

New orders loomed—

for Teos? Chios?

Any route but home

meant aching arms

and thighs,

an increased chance

of storm delivering them

to Poseidonas's lair.
“You don't suppose...?”

one of the thranitai

proposed.
The Macedonian

beside him growled,

“The fucking Jews

love blasphemy

and mayhem;

our crazed Hebe

was no exception.”
The six marines

on board

on their swords

and quietly prayed,

their mission changed

from ferrymen

to counterterrorists.

that unhinged

Galilean bitch

or take him prisoner,

they might

wind up rich.

All nice runs end.

beside her, snoring,

both knew better

than pretend

meant nothing,

was a non-event,

matter of course:

a man looks down

and sees

his lower half

is now a horse.
Would coat, tail, hoof

and the recalibrated penis

scare her off?
Could he ignore

the fresh thought

that his gazing

on the bay with her

was just a bore?
One answer was yes

and one was no.
It was only

a matter of time,

she guessed,

before he'd go.

from the southeast

woke her from deep sleep

like a call to prayer,

but she was too dispirited

to rise from bed: he wasn't there.

Rock grumbled again; that alarmed her.

She jumped up and ran outside

where scarlet kizilcik berries

lined the foot-trail inland

toward Çamlık and Magnesia

where Zeus had other shrines

and the Meander wended south.

She ran a hundred yards

but lost track of the path

in underbrush and turned around.

How could she run down

half a god and half a horse?

And if she could, to which half

might she fruitfully appeal?

She lowered her gaze to the city below

oddly wreathed in dust and smoke

and cried out in surprise to see

on Ayasoluk Hill a six-domed temple

laid out like a crucifix

that hadn't been there

when she'd gone to sleep.

Gospel of Pseudo-Miriam - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 2 – Clio/Tom:
Miriam kept her diary in a boot,

and when the Roman trierarch

tossed her hut, he stuck it

as an afterthought into his tunic:

somehow it went its way to Busra.
When he was nine, a young Arab man

(peace of Allah be ever upon him)

snuggled up next to his uncle

and begged to be taken

up to Syria with the next caravan;
an old hermit in his cave,

a beard tattooed upon his chin,

frog eyes above the upper lip,

dimples bored into his cheeks,

sextant between his brows,

implored the dusty merchants

to accept a feast of hospitality;
when the camel-drivers left the boy

to tend the animals,

a small cloud hovered

above the stripling's head

to shade him where he walked.
“Sheik, keep him safe

from Jews and Byzantines alike!”

the ancient friar cried.

“He fills the prophecy

in an untampered gospel

in an earthen jar right here

in the far alcove of my cave.”
When he grew up, the boy flew north

again on a magic stallion

and met Adam, Moses, Abraham;

twelve months later, fleeing Mecca,

he made another beeline toward Busra,

but adherents held him at Medina;

so he sent an army;
by then the hermit and the scrolls

had both been borne by muletrain

north to who-knew-where,

so the cavalry pushed on

to every compass point, doomed

never to find the thing they sought

but sowing Islam on the Earth.
The tale's unfinished.

Byron's Bastard, now it's yours.

and all it proves

is that an Aramaic lady

got knocked up

and had a son his friends adored.
Tom, it lacks that literary ring

of verisimilitude, that perfect pitch

of Moses floating in the bulrushes.

Resize, rebore, recalibrate, resight

the tale, blue-pencil it, so capuchins

can climb the highermost limb

and confidently prehensile it.

with both the interest and time;

you are the only one who

actually sat down,

opened the goddam diary, and read it.

De Natura Immortalitati - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 3 – Tom/Clio:
“Muse, this is much too obvious:

Miriam kept her diary in a boot,

and when the Roman trierarch

tossed her hut, he stuck it

as an afterthought into his tunic.

Why not like this:

did Zeus make Miriam immortal

like Tithonus, Memnon, Ganymede

(and what became of them)?

Are Collyridians correct, after all,

to bake her tiny loaves of bread?”

Unlike undying Tithonus—thin, gray

and dumb as pencil lead, the ink dried

on the last account of him millennia ago—

departed Miriam sips fresh blood every day.

Look what you wrote just then, above:

her cheeks are positively glowing!”

Chewing the Fat - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 4 – Zeus/St. Paul the White Cockatoo/Bahira the Nestorian Monk
“God's not allowed to change!” Zeus bellyaches.

“The Hebrew god said all he had to say, in Torah;

the Christian god went mum after Apocalypse;

the Muslim god 's prohibited to send another prophet!

Yet we're omnipotent?”
“Fuck!” Zeus's white bird shrieks.
“Zeus,” says Bahira, “sit down, let me wash

the dust and—what's that?—manna?—

off your feet. Why get bent out of shape,

who cares what people think?

You are your own god, no?

If you want folks

to have a clear idea of who you are

you could just tell them face to face.

But you don't.”
“Yes, I do. I do tell them just as plainly

as I'm telling you.

Do you have any of that

camel cheese I had here

last time, by the way?

Oh, excellent!

But when I tell them to their face, they say,

You can't be god. God doesn't sit and munch

on cheese and chew the fat.

I'm not allowed to do that, either!”
“Fuck!” Zeus's white bird shrieks.
“Why care then, Zeus?

Who works on image harder than the Emperor,

and you know what people think of him.

Be free, just live your life!

It's not like anybody's forcing you

to raise the pyramids, or seven whining kids,

and a hen-peck for a wife.

Have the courage of your own convictions!”

but you don't understand what courses through a god's veins—

claptrap, same as anybody else.

If you have any

of that date-palm wine,

I'll take that too.

Oh, who's like you?

Listen, Khalid's finished in Iraq

and coming this way next.

You know the drill:

Muhammad's ordered him to spare

all monks, and you especially—

but stuff happens that's unexpected,

and if I were you I'd make some tracks.

Jerusalem's holier,

but I think it's safer

for a Christian up in Anatolia.”

refilling the quickly emptied flask.

“What brings you down this way

besides your yen for delicatessen?”

gone south? My heart gets broken

like cheap clockwork. I know what led

you here, and one day I may come hole up

inside a bookish cave as well!

This time, the woman's son is playing with my head.

If I find Hera's orchestrating this,

I'll make her wish that she was dead!”

It's a trifle salty but the muleteers

who brought it said

it's from the isle of Euripides and Ajax

that holds Korinth and Athens at

arm's length and is called Peace.

It's got more garlic in it ounce for ounce

than anything in all of Greece!

World-weariness cannot last long

when wine and sausage are this strong:

that is the secret to we monks' success.

Devotion's always on our tongues, mon Zeus:

the greatest inspiration is bonnes bouches.”
“Give here,” Zeus says.

“Though Ajax and serenity are not a natural pair,

still, if Euripides found comfort in salami

as he wrote Medea and Electra in his cave,

my own devices for revenge may be improved.

The problem is, I don't know who to strike.

Is it my envious first wife

pulling the puppeteer

or is Yeshua really overstepping?

So many ancient temples rudely sacked,

burnt, razed, or recommissioned

summon me from my retirement with Miriam,

watching gulls wheel on the tide and guessing

what they've got inside their beaks.”
“Zeus,” says Bahira. “D or Z before an -eus

is cause for greater strife than universal Theos:

it's odd that neither man nor god can find

anything more interesting to fill their mind.

Religion-wise you know I swing both ways

or none at all. My faith is sunken deep

only in matters where I sink my teeth.

I can afford that luxury—

but who are you without humanity's belief?”

up on Koressos and admired the gleaming bay

as much as anybody ever could!

I tried monogamy. I tried to read True Blood.

But when the Shrine of Artemis was sacked

right there, right at my feet, the idyll burst.

My godly fury all rushed back

into my veins and all I want to do is find out

who's responsible and barbecue their brains!”

which olive oil has the perfect nuttiness,

ask how the Essenes process their sage honey

or if Dead Sea salt tastes more like mourner's tears

each year as shores recede;

but which god plots with which, to gain what end?

You'll have to ask a wiser man.”

Mount Gamalama blew

with twice the heat

its antecessor threw--

and the first face

that I saw when I came to

was this big bear

right here, Pak Zeus.
I squawked;

he said, Did you say 'fuck'?

in that far-western twang

of his:

then my colossal crest popped up

I lived in a tree-hole,

ate papaya and the odd skink,

had no social life,

no name

and knew no Greek.

in an atheneum

with a magic monk;

have a name saint;

can proclaim

in several tongues

and absolute impunity

the sex act: Fuck!
It's been a better life

than I expected.

I was the fifth egg

in the nest

and had the worst

six weeks of fledging

in the annals of pubescence—
clutch-mates hogged the food

and boxed my beak—

which our parents encouraged.

But The last shall be first

and the first shall be last,

as Zeus ordained, himself

the youngest of his brood.

Guy to Guy - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 7 – Bahira/Zeus
“Some think the fall of Ephesus,

its silted port, are go-around-and-come-around

for how their Council screwed Nestorius.”
“Whatever it is, I'm striking back.

I over-looked that lovely temple every day!

How can I sit and watch while provocation grows

so bold in my own neighborhood?

You met Muhammad; were impressed with him.

I'm lending his militia zeal and strength to chasten

Christian Byzantines who've all forgotten

where they came from!

Khalid himself is coming: pack your scrolls,

find someplace else to hide and stuff your face.”

with the mule-trains northward to Aleppo,

and thence east into Armenia.

I have brothers on the south shore of Lake Van—

the Mother of Heavenly Pearl-mullet Roe!

Wherever you wind up, I'll send you some.”
“Umm, and this salami isn't bad!

Now, fill me in: your uncorrupted tale of Miriam

foretells Muhammad as a back-to-basics messenger

who puts Yeshua in a secondary role?

I hope it's so! This silly mixing up of man and god

has driven half my faithful to apostasy,

the other half, half mad.

And all the God says this and God says that

must stop! Who dares put words into my mouth?”

Miriam has written about me. But no, I understand

I can't; religious scripture has éclat precisely because

no divine is authorized to even read a word of it.”

I know I'm rough around the edges.”

it's clear she thinks you have a lot of promise—

oh, you hooked her! Though she recognizes

the propensity you have to try to con us.”

I only hope she wants to try and patch things up.

Please pass that baydh date wine?”