Nemeleoan

Gnashing tooth in terrible fury upon knuckle and jaw

The wives watched, drinks in hand...

and I wondered everything one wonders when one watches;

Why Hercules?
Why not the Lion of Neme, mane wild and prideful?
Shoulders rude and wide, breath a hushed, whiskered noise,
coarse and rumbling low.

But no.
That golden mane, trampled under trash and mired in the blood of martyrdom
rests under the footsteps of small men,
the sputtering of their thoughts a mockery
to the memory of his rich pulse, a thundering pride of coarsing blood that shall move no more
except to drain, bubble and pop
as that grand beast’s body is strewn upon the flames like so much refuse
to swaddle their tiny hearts in the comforts of complacency,
breasts and minds never to overflow with the swelling of what was lost -
too ignorant to comprehend that they should cry.
Glasses tink and eyes wink and shoulders are clapped beneath cupped hands.
From the glare of flashbulb and colored paper ribbons twirling like snakes through the air...
not one amongst them has the decency to shy.
Not one amongst them cares.

And he -
That rippling errand boy wearing his skin as a badge,
ignorant to the stench of blood which marks him as murderer.
That craftsmen of orphans,
that pathmaker of progress,
where all the knives they did muster proved dull
where arrows bent and broke -
he showed it takes no more skill to wring out life from a throat
than to twist water from a rag.
Shall he think of what has passed or why?
How shall he recall the cause for which was fought, or what for which has died?
In drink, and gamble and oblivion -
with blind excess...
welcoming the noise of oncoming steam and falling tree
in this, the early spring of his career.
I, if only could, would witness the moment when his eyes clear;
to watch him realize that his bones too shall be ground as grist -
that one day his shall be the love scoured clean from the surface of things
by ambition’s pathetic, lamentable fist.