La Conversazione (In three cantos, starting with Lucrezia Borgia and alternating between Lucrezia and her brother Cesare)

I.
Where have you been, brother friend.
Never far, never near.
Just beyond fingers that would hold you,
Into me-in me, constant, though unsettling.
I am aware of this distance, it can ne’er be breached.
The waters which divide us stand, house upon the sand,
Glinting, golden cockles about your brow,
Floating wavelet your man-child eyes see me-but do not.

The ache cinches constricting and clawing
Robbing me, raping me, while I stand here bloodied
And the blood, our blood flows like a river
Down the blade.

We don’t think these things, the thoughts themselves
Verboten. Could you have ever said them in my presence
Your hands tremble eyes, London blue, cool as the ocean,
Slip through.

Brimming tears, you dare not shed,
Dread laden -dead.
While my hands and lips would wait forever
For the remittance that never will be.

This would be our final hour.
This would be our last hoorah.
This would be our solo foray into the wave,
Where words are not tainted and love is not stained.

Let us come up from the sea.
In the light of day; let us be brave.

II.
Not brave, no knight stands before you.
Only the mirage -twisted, fright-filled knave.
To see you is not simply torture.
It is my crucifixion.

The curls upon my brow convolve,
Bristles jimmying into the emulsified core,
Where memory waits.
My hands upon you,

Hands that would clasp
And then compound as cement
Into that sweet honeyed nave,
Into your crystal prism intemerate cave.

Or the foot and heel- steel,
Wailing against brittle molded bone,
Crushing the central point- tiny tinder twigs,
Pubic symphysis against your vulva-velvet dome.

Did I do this;
Club, club to rub out what was.
Did I do that thing so hateful to you,
The one most loved.

Or was it desire;
Feeding and nesting on fire,
While with a pitchfork, the stabs came inwardly
Secretly so, though forever without sin.

I close my mouth against the words, lest they escape –
Prisoners on the run.
We scream sanctuary, not from them,
But from the voices huddled within.


III.
In my dreams, it was gentler.
There were no bouts, fists, and feet,
Heel as staves raging in paroxysms
While the room dropped and spun.

In the quietude,
Between night and dawn we lay
The thrum of your beating, thundering warmth
Heart inside my skin.

There you would ne’er voice it.
Nor wink in self -assured acclamation.
Within your breast, certainty beamed,
And the blade was sheathed.

I could hear you low, unafraid,
Though the reckless and galling sea
Pitched and tossed me o’er the railing, heart submerging
Neath the cool black glass tempered pane.


Away, away from the surety of your gaze.
The unsteady rage.
In my dreams, it was a gentler thing, 
And the words themselves remembered.
 
Not the sour lit craze, 
But the solid glowing flame.
Not the fists shooting death drones 
Into the secret place where Venus reigns.
 
Not the dusky hours of screams unanswered. 
My innocence deflowered, but the canon writ of love, 
Which in its beauty is silent; 
But not extinguished.

Hammer of God,  © 2018 Poetic Justice Books, and Amazon