Benjamin “Biggers” Kane: Extortionist, Murderer, Bibliomancer.
Benjamin “Biggers” Kane:
Extortionist, Murderer, Bibliomancer.
(Interviewer’s Notes: As before, he smiles and I go cold.
But, as he speaks, his eyes are as afraid as mine.)
No one could ever know the lust I had
for hope. But Gilgamesh was dead and cold
by the time I was eight. And Beowulf
was burned when I was nine. Odysseus
went back in Ithaca when I was twelve—
and he did nothing anymore but sit
hearthside, the wings of falcons breaking in
his hands. But sweet Athena didn’t care—
the bones were not her bones. Her great hero
had mildewed. Me? I let the falcons live.
Each night, alone, I sit, draw glyphs of prayer
inside the puddled ink of Clark Kent’s bones.
I kiss his dog-eared, comic “S,” exalt
this only God who lets me tend his bones.
Appears in “Measure”
Taken from “…hide behind me…”