JOHN THE BAPTIST REGARDS THE VEILS OF SALOME

Her rhythms part waves -
Thigh, hip, breast, tongue.
In the splash I see only desert wind
Razor sharp that flays my vision.
This is not about me.

No blade can sever
What no heart has denied.
My body is mere locust shell -
A grain, a scruple, a dram,
A measure less than an ounce -
Like the legend of her desire.

HEROD ON JB REGARDS THE VEILS OF SALOME

I die again and again
In her tight, moist wrap.
I am mummified, made perfect
For her, for the journey,
To forever become eternal.
I am a god only when devoured,
Only eclipsed in her body.

When she holds his head,
She will never leave me,
Never not minister to me.
I cannot hold back.
There is no other happiness.
To forgo this is utter madness!
The axe. Now!

JOHN HORVATH JR.

On Having Read JB

Great men, their petty passions
drive them sane, withdraw from
banquets set with golden fineries
for a pot of flies for their mean meals
and locusts as desert, a fine repast,
while others bask in Mamon's gifts.

So, saints would have us nod as
if belief alone must merit our consent;
or, prophets would have us kneel as
if they themselves were god.

What is a man but pantheon; father,
brother, master, brute! each deserves
worship, if only from their kind. Should
all the gods I am thus genuflect to those
who nonetheless would bow before
the power of my earthly throne.

Who fathered me to such esteem
but dead, dry, dessicated bones.
Who more guilty of a sin? Who flogs
his kin or who commands him flog.

Repent? I laugh! Bow down to whom?
Who knows my sin, a sinner is indeed.
The desert is a lonesome place
where a mere man may be his king
and so avoid such guilts as mine
proclaimed by the feckless crowd

who know me not and cannot
comprehend they barter not
with Rome but with far more
ancient Legion against whose
conquests even father's dim,
before whom stand our pettry
private cosmologies
as if they mean.