PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

The two of you were good together,
especially on those sulty nights
in Thebes, in the private chambers above
the palace's public porticos and pavillions;
far from the gossiping courtiers
and the endless, sometimes violent, debates
(theology, your father's heresy).
Apart from thar officially sanctioned chatter,
and the ancient Pharaonic rituals,
the two of you were really good together;
clad in the scantiest of linens---
which were only a provocative tease,
antecedent to the naked touch
of bodies aroused by the most exquisite
desire for intimate satisfaction,
followed by hours of needed repose,
still nude, embraced in each other's arms.
Elderly, unimaginative men
now whisper that the reign of the rather boyish
(and too young) king amounts to nothing
more than a scratch on the stone cold eye of a sphinx
or a mediocre tomb among his betters.
In the dust on the floor of the granite chamber,
your footprints remain behind the sealed door;
that last farewell ---barefoot---as he would have liked.
You still sleep unclad, and in that way you keep
his memory nearer to you. Close your eyes
and your own fingertips feel amost like his,
the way he used to play your flesh's tenderest music,
like a master artist composing love songs.
The window remains open. Starlit night
is meant to be your canopy. The city's scents
drift in, like common incense, to the sound
of the Nile's current, both near and far at once.
Beyond the other bank, and indistinct
in the darkness, are the tombs; his among them.
And on a balcony, not far from yours,
a man, like a shadow (but more sinister)
stares without blinking toward where he thinks you are
(as you are bare and drifting off to sleep):
his gaze like that of a noxious serpent seeking prey:

the wiley, perverse and indefatigable Aye.

Starward

[jlc]