The Protagonist

Go then,

A slave born unto a slave born unto a slave,

Your ageless skin scorched brown, lacerated,

caked in your filth and excrement:

your matted hair, and beard sprinkled over with

Fine white sand; the skin of your hands and feet thick

with calluses, your eyes staring out of sunken sockets

Like glowing embers! Hateful!

You, who have carried your chain for miles, dragging its mark

Across the flaming desert,

Under the bullwhip of your masters. You, who are

Deeply digging away with picks and crowbars

and iron wedges

at the navel of the subterranean beast,

digging amongst the marble ridges in the secret internecine

Twists and folds of the pitch-black stone slope on

the steepest edge of the plateau,

Hammering out the layered ribbons of gold

From the congealed darkness:

Go then!

Rise out of the most dun smoke

that clouds the unknown heart of hell

in the white-hot deserts of Nubia,

And explode

into the pit of the yawning amphitheater.

Look around you:

high up there in the packed galleries, the splendid men, and

their gorgeous women waving their silken kerchiefs,

Clad in dazzling raiment, their jewels winking

in the sun, that with unblinking gaze pours forth its fire

from a cauldron of deep cerulean hues.

Hear them roar in unison! Deafening, like a monstrous ocean,

clamoring for your blood. Their eyes are tongues,

Their faces, all teeth, hungering for your

Flesh. Small wonder, for they have paid for both,

And soon both will lie there, butchered

and spread out thick on

 the hard-packed sand of the arena.

Look at her, a noble lady, reclining on a

The couch in her cavea, her head inclined

Like a Cimabue Madonna, devouring with her eyes,

your well-oiled, sleek, sculpted body, your organs

Hanging out before you, her lips parted,

her breath panting hard – already in

the paroxysms of her pleasure.

(Your orgasm comes later when you’re

On your back with your guts spilled out, in the rising smell

of your blood gushing out

In boiling streams from your sliced up

belly gaping up at the sky.

But of course, you knew that already!)

Go then, naked,

Out into the ring, as every mother’s son, fresh

out of the womb.

You, a slave, but a slave like no other.

A man, but a man like no other, with

generations of timeless toil embedded in your bones,

and the lightning dancing in your feet,

you have mastered living where death brings blessed relief!

You, who have trained in the killer’s trade,

Earning fortunes for your owners,

Who are you? What do you see?

Will you be the protagonist,

To set in motion strange, impossible

Works, that once begun

will stretch forth into space and time,

towards a history yet unborn,

to bring to its knees the juggernaut

that crushes the many at the hands of

the powerful few?

But no matter! Your face, near mythical, carved

In stone, betrays nothing of the

dangerous scorpions

crawling around in your brain.

Your body is at perfect rest, 

for you know the art

of conserving your strength like a tense,

the tightly wound-up coil of steel.

Hark! the drums roll and the trumpets blare!

Now must commence, with flourish and fanfare

the play of the deadly swords, diabolically curved,

(They split the skin with the slightest flick!),

The duels, the long, grisly gashes, the flowing

Blood, the dismemberment, the skill,

the agony of bowels ripped out and

the ecstasy of blazing motion!

Like a rush of autumn breeze ‘twixt the branches

of bald graveyard cypresses,

A bitter-sweet aching sigh passes through the crowd,

as they wait, quivering like leaves, for

The games are to begin!