ELAGABALUS
A
sexual rebel testing the limits
of
near-divinity: mad? Quite possibly. Tragic? Yes.
Evil?
In the cage of his omnipotence, what does that mean?
Blame
the mother for planting the seed
of
Mercury and El-Gebal in him beneath Palmyra’s date trees.
The
golden chain of Emperors was hardly without weak links
but
it couldn’t take
the
strain of the Syrian boy-priest.
Belonging to the goddess,
trapped
in the wrong flesh prison, even Imperial order
and
all Rome’s physicians could not
contrive
a vagina for him.
Imperial
purple
and
the soft wool of newborn lambs.
He
wished to be
all-thing
and no-thing
the
black stone of the god
a
meteorite
burning
through the sky.
In
its blackness he saw his true face reflected
and
it spoke to him.
Removing
himself from Nature,
his
head was tight-closed hothouse of exotic
and
sensitive orchids of perversity, howling beneath
a
full moon of sex like apes on heat.
Like
apes on heat the parasites
howled
for him to use his power.
His
hatred for those wanted him to do things
was
palpable – the more they wanted, the more he shocked
playing
the street whore on marble staircases.
Knowing
they could not refuse he fed them exquisite banquets
of
glass, brick, ivory and marble; he watched from the balcony
with
gloating eyes, his purple drag wrapt round him
as
they drowned in fragrant cataracts of rose petals.
The
snow, crimson and white, kept falling.
He
sought in days slashed the purple of wine
the
purity of newborn lambswool.
Rome
was the mirror he coolly regarded
the
mask of his face in until the water boiled.
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