There it is, the Medici Lion
placed like a point on your forehead.

A call to arms, you hone in on your legacy,
print ten thousand copies
of your manifesto
to you.

You, who arrested me
with your tall tales of wrestling down the moon,
slinging her lifeless crescent
over your shoulder,
carrying her head home to me.

Remember I cried?
Diaptomus rose up from the lake
and laid across her skin like a sheet of boiled rice.

Make me a new coat, one that does not announce
your power and ruthless being.

I can no longer be draped in songs of your guns raised high,
your towers that took over the trees,
your thrones carved from the mountain’s side,
knives constantly unsheathed and thirsty.

How many times can you slice a thing?
Aristotle must be happy,
to see his theory put to the test.

You ask me
should you hang the moon back up on her nightly rack,
as though that might get
her heart back beating.   

No, I’ve already bought her plot.
Her elegy is written, and her funeral set for this Sunday.

Yarrow will blanket her, along with the rot.
Her light is gone.

If only time would run backward.
I wish life granted favors.