A RESPONSE

M

reminds me of my plainness
a one-syllable abrupt timely thing
that leaves nothing for the tongue
to fuddle over or anything for the lips
to purse themselves for a false kiss
that one could grant the air as it
trickles down from the warm streams
of the mouth; and i remember that he
from twothousand years ago was only
the second; and how he from now fortyfive years ago
thinks nothing of the moniker that
perhaps is the reason why he is so plain,
so flat, so undrawing to the world -
like the cacophony of a single ugly sound

A

a cry from my Mother Rome:
how well it molds the first ugly thing
and makes is something more -
something of power that greets the day
with a brand-new-fuck-you attitude
claiming the land and all of time
as his, as one, for the sake and the sex
of a beauty that keeps him pushing
against the world, a timeless struggle
to move onward, to move through barriers
brought upon the old - he was young and
reckless
i am young, reckless in some right
but not enough to bear the dagger
that he did, my namesake.

MA

only half of what this is supposed to be
but only a true part of what i am:
the ugly, abrupt, unbeautiful follower of Christ
plus
the cry of power deep within a Mediterranean root

how this makes such a strange thing

i wonder who is the champion
of your strange lovely thing