© 1995 Dave Awl

Lay of The Antimuse

Ring me the knell of the hiccuping idiot,
tear out the tongue of the celibate scribe;
devour with silence his cries and his canticles,
marry the dark to his eyes.

In the moldering cell of the blessed apostate,
fathom me down to the nock of his thought--
poison the impulse, garrote the delivery
strangle the seminal, blistered and taut.

Bury his blessings and unmake his elegies,
choke the grim deeds of his gravest desire;
let him weep in a circle of straining uncertainty,
cough in the dust of a counterfeit fire.

I will regard him, and safekeep and render him,
I alone secret him, twined with my roots:
when he sleeps at the end of my fugue of destruction
I'll pay him in silver and gild him in suits.