The Cremation of Nero

[Ghost]

I've been followed from the burning
by a thing I will not turn to see,
but choose instead to dream her up
from the darkful, sleeping depths
of me. Thus, I've lit her steps

with sparks of hurry and forged
her breathing from the brands,
and from the hissing of the smoldered
coals I saw there seething in the slag,
I raked her eyes from fitful stirs

of ash and blacked her gaze to fall
like cinders, all, so that her days
and mine are now alike: the tread
of charmed and haunted ways where
we've been banished long to embers

in the sooted quarters of the slums,
until at last we've reached these pyres
of the cracked and blazing Gods, alas
to find us naught but figments of their fires,
our Rome a scorching ruin of the sun.

I would linger here to sing our dirge
but find my hands sink through the bow;
O, I and they and you and all are else
but smoke, but ghosts in languid rising
from the ending of a hateful glow.

[wylde]

beaten black on anvils bruised truth
perception's fingers it's rosary
while atumnal boney fingers
bloom.