My Immortal
For Brad Richard 

A hero is a monster, isn’t he?
The boy I know is a road through when
dressed up in mortality, incognito
under all that skin.  He dissolves
the colors, dismantles glory,
and thrives on lack of light.
The gods feed on human death, especially

the ones who say I am the only one; men die
lying miraculously near each other.
He sits crushing pieces of world
between his palms: it’s what gods
do, or so he’s read in handbooks, manuals,
how-to guides.  Thales says
the world is water, and he pours it

from open hands, not knowing
how deep is far enough.  There are laws
concerning bodies colliding, the bias
of bent wings: he wants
to learn them, break them one by one.
He drifts half-dressed through adolescence
like some courtyard Eros, grows up

to be a slaughterhouse.  No god
could survive such hindered
devotions, warlike densities hacking a path
through him—his introspection
and wounded politics, his ache
and assignation of blame.  (He stinks
of cumin, cloves, and ginger,

cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, and cardamom:
a cargo of rare commodities
to keep that meat from rotting.
They cost too much.)
The fall of Rome is never-ending,
a desperate grandeur, all nothing
lent an air of what once was: the cracked

basilicas and toppled colonnades
quarried for next century’s aqueducts,
retaining walls, an intricate wound
to be paved over.
He rains stature on late landscapes
made of marble, made of granite,
made of bronze; stands up to wind,

rain, snow, or any weathering.
A country wears its history
on its skin, strip-mine and clear-cut
scars, landfills, slag heaps, tailings.
The cure of birds, the animal rain,
sunset was singing God is dead
but wouldn’t say which one.
 

Page 3

Copyright 2007, Reginald Shepherd.
All Rights Reserved by Author.