The Deuteragonist

February 03, 2006

She glides from the foot of the cardboard
Aventine, behind the shadow of a man, obscene
in his crimson toga and the ebullient motions,
she swallows with a sad smile of stoicism.
She washes his feet and sings; a slow, trilling
that creeps like the brass snake on her ankle,
slithering to bite that part which bleeds for her.
She stands beside his chair, while he eats
pretentiously oblivious to stares and whispers
stoking the laughter that rang across the hall.
This comic response to a figure of a master,
whose caricature merely shows--

she is divinity gently tolerant to his drunken fool.

blue rogue