Catullus With Serpent Eyes
© Surazeus
2025 11 24

While I dwell in garden of insolence
I pretend to be the most unique soul
who ever dares project breath of hot flesh
against refractive prism of the world
which cannot see me with indifferent mind
so I can accept my death with grim grace.

Thus I play guardian for the rights of Man
by mocking tyrants on their fragile thrones
then packing fractured skull of innocence
in suitcase sewn from skin of devil wings
when I ride cruise ship west to Avalon
where no one knows the things that I have done.

I ask God what he will do when I die,
if he will drink light of my shattered soul,
or wear my flesh as garment of his goal,
since I am silent words of sea-smooth stones
that clatter soft in empty house of bones,
but he says naught, so I am not afraid.

Suddenly awake in huge doorless house
veiled by enormous hollyhocks of faith,
I write names of the dead on endless walls
while shopping for fruit in the grocery store,
erased by ocean waves of honest time,
but no one hears me read their names in rain.

If I would learn to sing of noble love
perhaps brave Catullus with serpent eyes
may steal the ancient lyre of Mercury
from grand museum by the River Styx
and train my hands with graceful agony
to feature beauty of my loyal bride.

Since I was born in garden of cracked skulls
one hour before the savior of the world,
I live in safe obscurity from fame
far from the stage where clowns play politics
where I map history of humanity
to prove we are no more than singing fish.

My feathered wings of ardent hope for love
may crystallize from wordless ice of truth,
but I express compassion for all souls
in lofty chronicle of measured verse
recording grand events as they occur
to highlight hero of this stormy age.

Stupendous future molded by our votes
provides framework for discipline of rage
where we communicate our special terms
transforming modes of apprehending love
so we share feelings in circle of masks
that reflect assumptions our eyes project.

surazeus.blogspot.com/2025/11/…

Orpheus teaches Catullus how to compose elegant verse that could transform society of the empire with innocence of selfless love.

#Poetry #Poem #Pastoral #Necropastoral #MetaModernism #Transrealism #NewSublimity #NewRomanticism #AmericanDream #Cinemism #Existentialism #Surrealism #NegativeCapability #NewGnosticism #MetaRealism #NewTranscendentalism #Astarism