Spring’s Inferno by Alice Osta

On the tip of my cigarette I saw appear 

Medusa 

Eight nicotine-snakes around my wrists 

I rubbed my arms until blood-ink 

Carved my veins with their secrets 

Not a trace of what held me yesterday 

I stumble on a cemetery of ashes while 

Ithaca on my ribs, I wait 

For Icarus to fall 

And yet again nothing 

Loving an angel made me a saint 

Holding her breasts, I imprecated 

With one hand all purgatory, and 

Done waiting for Decaying Eros 

I cursed She who had knighted me 

With the glitter of her halo. 

Hating a saint made me heretical 

New fate of ridges and sand 

‘Let love splash over us!’- she said 

Considered turning hysterical 

I touched her skin and found it was dry 

I Eended up pitying her glistening 

Maybe I should smother my grudges 

Giving is all her Holiness does 

While I shamelessly take 

She turned her left cheek kneeling down, 

Set yet again to canonize a rancid heart 

Where gut, lymph, and gravel 

Collide 

Yet it was my turn. 

She’d drown her pouty lips in the ambrosia 

Where lied all my hatred 

But empires are soon to die 

Dancing on the Stygian banks I found 

Gorgon's eyes; joy and pain.