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Pumice
Your breath is shallow.
‘I have loved you almost
two thousand years.’
Your skull, drawn
to my chest close,
fragile like pumice.
I would shield you
if I could.
Your veins
a palimpsest.
You whisper
of charlatans.
Great machines
drive roads. Crops
are rubble.
Magic men,
open their capes,
circumnavigate
the globe. Webs
of illusion are real.
Dragons like humans
breathe fire
leaving bleached
deads. Clouds
blast bone.
Earth erupts.
Blood balled
feasts are held
on hollow graves.
Youth’s mystery
and mastery lost.
Our ghosts tread sea foam.
Tell me of the mantichora.
‘It is of excessive swiftness
and is particularly fond
of human flesh.’
Fish are gasping
on the snowy sand
at Stabiae.
We are ash.
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