the echoes of ancient warbling
         jilting priests of faith
                    abandoning the path for the pleasure

              what would the matriarch say as she lay in eternal sleep
         cloistered and deafened by the archaic rumblings of incest
                        ensconced in a man-made prison of her own work

                    he who lingered on the precipice of denial
                             his peripheral skewered with what-ifs
                         he took the bludgeoning blame boldly

                                    fatally

             a crushing sweep of dry tinder lit like the banquet halls
                        surrender had been sweet, until defeat
                                  serpents tasting the salty air in the baths of blood

                          as roman ships crush the gods beneath their heels
                    sinking, unknowingly, into history and its winner’s cornucopia
                                   blinded by gold, unseeing of the knife in the dark