Sissy Aqueducts

Legionnaires loiter on the Via Appia,

Smutty with Visigoth gore & as smug

As frat bros shotgunning Budweisers

With glitter entangled in their pubic hairs’

Michelangelian sprawl. Ay me, the sub

Sighs to his dom, deep in his Arendt

Under piney parasols, while the fanfares

Of Respighi mount the skies—the spit

Collects at the corners of the six bucc-

Inators’ lips, like dew falling on hyacinths,

Racemes moody by the battered racquet,

Or the Rococo, sperm-candle lambency

Of the Lacedaemonian prince, struck

Dead by a tennis ball, his god-beloved body

Immaculate on a cascade of marmalade

Chiffon. O Tiepolo, miglior fabbro, your

Satanic atlantid is castrated by Apollo’s

Hand. A macaw in coral and jade—

Part Aeolian harp, part Aztec whistle skull—

I sing what I see behind the leaves:

In search of a lost Joe Dallesandro scene

Circa Flesh, I find only Callas in Turandot

Headpiece weeping and sweeping

The cobbles with the hem of her caftan

While Pasolini leads the legionnaires away,

Arm hooked in spray-tanned arm.

And the arches there—pink as Daniel’s

Asshole as he awaited the lions

And graffitied with all the vulgarities

Of Pompeii—look barely able to stand,

But the waters they bring are so sweet—

They taste of such distant mountains.