................................Caligula Poem by elysabeth faslund

Caligula, like Nero, was not born neurotic (by today's standards) . They progressed to that stage through power, and money....
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Ah Caligula, with puff pouty lips, I hear your trumpet call
out away across barren sands.
Have you enough soft silks, satins?
Have you enough silk, satin skins?
Cast away your wine...cast away your mind?
Or will you drown scorpions in grapemares?
Only scorpions mark passage to your palace lair...
sand arid scurry prints tick, tick. Tick-tock.
Timed den of mania proclaimed, maintained...
trumpet your sour lungs.

Ah Caligula, with pasty face, youth floats to the surface...
a bloated, gnawed fish, reflecting waters of madding years
vined, knotted, with temple whores'
boy-women,
pawing acquiescence for your poisoned touch.
Trampling each the other to hear nonchalant insanity
slithering oldness across your reddened eyes.
Have your temple whores an arched tail?
Have your temple whores attended desert schools
of privation truths...sought redemption in a dewdrop?

They sanctify your demoned darkness,
as you, theirs.
Your call summons.

I arch only in the desert
of Truth.