The Stallion's Mouth - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 8 – Zeus

if not for me,

no muse or bard

would ever make a squeak.

but not that busybody Moses

and Yeshua's twelves Apostles

contradicting my philosophy

You put a finger in my eye,

I put a shaft of lightning

where you had a head.

And let me set the record straight:

I sent no son

to you because I loved you so!

I loved a woman, the rest was

Physiology 101.
Anything else you want to know?

You want to hear my cockatoo

one of seven Keepers

of the world's

most academic heresy.

fully God

as well as man

when still a baby,

dribbling?
A: What goddam difference

does it make

unless somebody

also wants to parse

the infant's goo-goos,

gah-gahs

of his arse?

actually childlike

or just playing the part?
A: Hard to imagine the morose bastard

ever knew what fun was.

with a cave of my own has benefits.

I eat well, read well, sleep well,

and when Zeus comes, we can talk:

there are no prying ears

or eaves to drop.

to take on any shape I thought

of carnal interest—

To get your rocks off properly

just once.
I said, You idiot,

what makes you think

the shape you've got

is not my cup of tea?
He blushed,

apologized for his insensitivity.

he's that omnivorous.

Instead, we opened

a marvelous-smelling skin

of hashish cakelets

left as thank-you by a young man

from a camel train

with whom I shared something

as heavenly as sex,

my extensive collection

of pre-synoptic gospel books.
Who was this baker-scripturist?

Zeus asked.

I don't remember

what else was discussed,

but his interest in the boy

kept blossoming—

and I congratulate myself.

A god like Zeus

knows how to pick them;

when he warns you

to get out of harm's way

he's not over-hyping

some hum-a-day ruckus.

The Prophet's Tale - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 10 – Muhammad:
Both inspiree and muse,

I have a word-hoard too

and lips to unlock it.
Whenever I felt a tickle in my ear

I used to know

somebody spoke of me;
then it became a roar;

and then a din;

so I had to use wax plugs

just to keep my own thoughts

in.
Prophecy is easy,

but organizing followers is hard.

No sooner do you get

20 husbands together than

they're talking about jihad—

and fifteen minutes after you say No,

somebody swears he saw you nod.

In Hira Cave the angel Jibrael

gave me one good inspiration,

Who taught man poetry?—

and shazam! I'm proclaimed

a top expert on marriage,

the veil, and distributing alms!
But If the shoe fits wear it,

Zeus said when he met me,

and far worse afflictions

than celebrity beset me.

when a learned monk said

I jumped for joy;

and Jibrael said,

I was happy to do anything

to get grief off my mind.
then my second son

followed him into the ground

and I simply surrendered.
Zeus—

the Roman church's Deus

(rhymes with He commands you obey us)—

the Greek church's Theos—

in Galilee Elah—

in Arabia Allah—

swears that everything is going to be okay.

Some heads will roll, but don't they anyway?

About military matters, ask Khalid.

He says my name is known in Baghdad,

and Damascus will be next.

hired me to lead her camels

north to Wadi al-Qura, Midian,

and Diyar Thamud into Syria

to trade hides, raisins, musk,

dates, silver bars, and herbs

for the Byzantines' luxuries—

oh, she became my rock indeed,

miraculously married me,

moved me into her house

behind the bazaar of the smiths

for a quarter century of bliss!—

as brides;

indulge my own four daughters;

and delight

as generals stomp in and out

and courtiers hiss

whose business is that but my own?

I've had a lot of luck.

me from obscurity

and trusted me,
it meant a lot.


Charge - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 11 – Zeus to Muhammad:
Your job is to undo

the damage done

by Yeshua's apostles:

somehow they made

of a dad, bird and son

a Trinity without a tit

amid the trio—

and point fingers

at me for misogyny!
One god manifest in

three essential ways?

Yeshua's and my

personalities don't fit.

He's my antithesis.

I try to frighten you

I usher in a plague,

How can

minds be one?

It's something

of a conundrum

that he's even

my son.
You brought Nineveh low;

now take Petra, Jericho,

Jerusalem, Acre, Tyre, Sidon,

Cyprus, Damascus, Palmyra,

Edessa, Aleppo, Antioch, Tarsus,

Miletus, Ephesus, Smyrna, Philadelphia, Chalcedon,

Nicomedia, Constantinople,

Alexandria, Memphis, Cyrene, Berenice,

Tripoli, Carthage, Hippo,

Sevilla, Mérida, Toledo,

Valencia, Braga, Zaragoza;

knock on the gates of Poitiers.

Cold dirt's ready to imbibe

a lot of Christian whines:

how dare they try

to jump the line

at the club of the divine!

of my enemy

is my friend.

Muhammad

return me

a monogamous

Mediterranean.

pull my boots on,

run from the hut,

find the overgrown track

toward Zeus's cave,

and plunge ahead

till soldiers' shouts

and black smoke

boil once pure air
below the friendly,

circling fishing-hawk—

the same one?—who'd

warned Yusuf and me

in Egypt of a monk

in soiled saffron

stalking us in a tacit

canoe of papyrus.

floor and wait. A long

time has passed since

Zeus left to do what

he felt he had to,
heartbroken not so much

from leaving me as

seeing that the Christians

weren't what he'd hoped

they'd be.
I get up and start to clean,

having traded my vista

of the sea for a thick,

safe ring of cedar-trees.

I watched him die,

but still have doubts

that something of his old man

didn't rub off after all
and late one morning

he'll come whistling up

and ask me as he used to

Ma, how's tricks?
And I miss Nazareth:

my dad, even my mother

and the stench of charcoal

from the mudbrick kilns

up on the hillside.

whatever century it is,

whatever anyone recalls of me

or not.

has passed.

Who kept me here

has gone.

The future is no longer

a frontier

and memory has dulled

the urgency

of my young girl's plea

to escape this backward,

sooty Galilee.

Lament, Complaint - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 13 – Tom:
Melpomene, queen of tragedy,

where are you when I need your grit?

Where's Clio when I wrestle history?

2,000,000 paces from the fountain spout

without a muse to hold my hand:

I am dancing in quicksand.

for Hesiod's unfinished masterpiece,

his Legion of Superheroes—

the sons of gods and human women?

Number 97.

An Egyptian

also used it

very lightly

for a paean

on a stele,

but funding

ran out in

mid-chisel:

Do you think

exactly what you whispered in

great Hesiod's ear.
You're shitting me.

You made him wait in line for that?

No wonder it's half-done!

And that poor stele guy probably uncorked

an asp on his own wrist!

Do you Nine have liability insurance?

Its not inspiration if it doesn't inspire:

it's a practical joke.

I couldn't compose a case of poison oak,

or stir a toad to croak,

or even move a Pole to dance a polka

with an inspiration as ridiculous as that.
“Oh, don't be so dramatic!

You do your job, we do ours.

Some of our best inspirations

are antipodal, homeopathic.”

I'd say that's traumatic!

and the fact that you don't see it

makes it worse.

these past three thousand years?

You need a Writer's Advocate

to warn, This Number 97's less

an inspiration than a curse.
“It's what it is.

I'm not the frickin' genius here,

you are.

Nitwit.”

Troth - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 14 - Erato:
The fishhawk oversoars

the golden hinterland

and Miriam understands

intuitively that Zeus has

not deserted her.
He hadn't walked out

when she gave birth

and he slipped off

to smoothe Yeshua's way,

but gone to attend

some other responsibility.
His beard had tickled,

so he shaved;

she liked to be licked a little,

so he dove;

he was a considerate lover;
he knew

a little omnipotence

could go a long way.
He could talk dirty too;

he had a lot of dirty notions

but kept the worst at bay

and only let her hear

the sort of thoughts

that heated a woman's ear.

He would return

when what he'd gone to do

was done.

a dozen dusty streets

on a rugged mountain

at nine thousand feet,

of cinnamon volcanic tuff

all linked by catacombs

and torch-lit tunnels,

with a Star of David

engraved on the ceiling

in a nod to the sky god:

from the Bet Maryam yard

as I've done every year
since light-inspired drones

began to dig by day,

and angel hosts by night,

to gouge the temple

out of mountain stone,
my brick-hued face

in low relief

on haloed gold,
a pretty neck

but body swollen

to a giant's hulk of rock.
Look at the fresco

of my first visit,

when Yeshua was an infant.
He clearly has

my nose and mouth,

and Zeus's eyes.
Entranced in red-edged robes

and golden scarves,

the priests
shake sistrums until dawn,

when kettledrums call

for the sun to join King David's

Dance and summon me,

born of egg divine, first cached

in Adam and passed down his line

through Solomon and

goat-footed Sheba's son

Dawit la-Hakim Menelik,

to Abyssinia ten centuries before

I came from Hannah's womb
and hid it in the sanctuary they

now call Maryam Z'iyon after me.

in an olive gown and yellow cross:

with the Ark

until the splendid burden

chars away his brain.

where the Nile is born

each day of each millennium
to give thanks

for Yeshua's thirteenth month

during his first four years

as an Egyptian boy.

ninety feet high, a thousand tons

cleft from the mountain

by the Ark's bald might;

steep sour bread on smoking donkey dung,

in Christendom perfumes the wind

beside the pilgrims' frankincense
and a nun,

her soul home to a zār,

wasting from an incurable catarrh.

who saw kids as rivals—edibility a bonus.

The young god battled back and won

his siblings' gratitude. Eyes dried;

but now he's also weighing filicide.
Why can't the first sons ever thrive?
First Hades draws the low end of the stick;

then Cain is spurned for Abel,

Isaac trussed for holocaust,

the wool thrown over Esau's eyes,

Moses cast off in a basket,

Jonah bellied by a whale;

my own boy hung to die.

The first son's lucky to survive.

but is the first fault of the firstborn son

the simple fact he's male?
The eldest daughters do alright:

Makaria who dips death's sting in honey;

Kalmana, earth-mother to so many;

Jemima warm and bountiful;

the lucky foundling's mother Merris;

and all the other unsung daughters

whose success was keeping their good names

off mythology's police blotters.

We eldest girls owe no one an apology.

We aren't ruled by Oedipus.

We don't inspire competitiveness.

We do what must be done

with minimum of fuss,

and God help anyone

who tries to fuck with us.
2. In the Bedroom
I know where the Amazons hunt;

they've been discreet contacting me,

and once I sent a small donation.

History is young.

I'm old enough to know

you never throw away an option:

one year you're carding wool,

the next you're spinning cotton.

since Adam: you never know

when gods might need a human

mother, lover, wife, or sister.

I'm nobody's victim,

but a warrior and a warrior's muse.

The meek and mild front believers see?

A blatant subterfuge.

run the film again. I knew which window

he'd pass by. I knew the best hook

was to stick my nose into a book

and not look up at him.
A virgin?

Sure, why not?

And sure, that white-rot fungus

overgrowing Zeus's chest of drawers

is Black Sea sturgeon.

Bitter - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 17 – Zeus to Miriam:
You conned me

into sitting back while John

and all the Christian maniacs

grew strong?

You did me with your tongue

while your butt-fucking son

flipped mighty Rome?

I hate

in like this

but

what

is going on?

This isn't supposed

to be

If you give up

on romance

everything

loses its shape.
“Don't be so formulaic!”

squawks

“Or is it tribal,

your objection to a human

as your daddy's rival?

Or

does the muse's bible—

disapprove of warlike

women?”
You're claiming

feminists give blow jobs

to distract prey

from their snow jobs?

No liberated woman

calls another woman's

dolce vita lewd.”
Drop the Italian.

What's sybaritic

about

servicing a stallion?

unfit to rule

on what a lady can

or cannot do.

1,925,011 interrupts.

”You want to see my tits?

I've been a woman ever since

I can remember,

and this guy ahead of me

is perfectly correct.

If Miriam fornicates or not,

if epiglottis or clitoris

on the business end,

that's her call, no one else's.

I had a good friend once

whose bliss was

pancaking her lover's nose

with pubic belches.”
You may have

standing, madam,

and yet you yourself

are craggy and foul-smelling

as macadam.

If we women

want a man's

esteem,

wielding deodorant

and tweezers—

then have to learn to balance

on the ledge between

cock-sucker and cock-teaser.

1,925,011 protests.

Be a selfbian

like poor Terpsichore

with Emerita OMG

self-lubricating ointment

and a Dr. Johnson penis,

shrieks Terpsichore,

brandishing her kithara.

"The point is: women don't exist

to curry any male's approval,

and that includes

erasure of our scent

or any kind of hair removal.”

as you like—

amuse the odd Hell's Angel

or bull-dyke

or Hank Bukowski.

I like riding in a limo,

loving in the Playboy Mansion,

poets as well groomed

as their scansion—

Mrs. Browning or

Mahmoud Darwish of Galilee.

This is the Era of Celebrity:

do Oprah with

your new line of perfume

and shake your junk on MTV.

1,925,006, now, complains.

“What's done is done.

The once-mild Miriam

has shown her claws and challenged Zeus

to watch Yeshua's sun eclipse his own.

Can she back up her threat?

Wasn't the last person who pissed

him off Prometheus?”
“Forget those jacked-up myths,"

says Byron's Twin.

“The question

isn't whether but wherewith

Yeshua's mother manages to win.”

Restoration - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 20 – Yusef:
Shlom, Miriam.

It's been a long time—

you don't even know I'm home—

but a terrifying storm

blew in tonight off Kinneret

and lightning struck

and in an instant

burned the old house

and the woodshop

to the ground.

his cot, the walnut mule—

all of it gone,

his Parthian button set

reduced to little blackened

nuggets of gold slag.

The one salvageable thing,

I didn't even know was there—

a beaten plate with Zeus's

face on it, engraved Beware.

something of a scare in me.

Sadder still, one of the kilns

was struck and blew up too,

its owner killed.

It was that fancy-bearded

man who lived alone

at the crest of the hill—

you know the one I mean.

A couple of us hurried

up to see if we could help,

but alas.

Everybody's murmuring

the gods, for reasons best

known only to themselves,

have got it in for us.

reaches you—if the report

I got that you had moved

to Ephesus is true—

I want to tell you

that I rue the day I left

and wish that you would

come home too.

to be Yeshua's father

and I always felt as if

your loyalty to him

exceeded yours to me.
But now I think, So what?

So what if Miriam adored

her son? So what if he

rejected my authority?
I had a wife who read

Shir ha-Shirim to me and warmed

my bed, who never failed

to comb the few hairs

on my head so lovingly.