Betwixt the Columns of this Colonnade

Taste the stomach lining. Taste the intestines. Push your yellow teeth chewing through them. Spongey, rubbery, gamey, bland. Guts of a lion. Tongue pressing against the stuff, feels like another tongue. This lion, bestowed on us by the grace and generosity of Elagabal, you assume, felled in the Circus Maximus for the glory of Rome. Lucky combatant, this was a sickly beast—you can taste it. The lion has been much better before. Perhaps will be again. Must be—it is my will and my will shall be done.

Summon, instead, a slave. Fuck the slave then split open its stomach via this pugio. From whence did this pugio emerge? You’re not sure. A gift from a decorated soldier of Rome perhaps? You have not yet served but here it is: standard military knife. A blade best for stabbing and not slicing, but it has served the empire and now this grander purpose.

Hear the screams of the slave as the other slaves hold it down, merrily, against the stone slab. Held with relief, to not be the victim beneath the knife, we watch the blood of its belly issue forth, bubbling dark like red vino on its bare olive skin. Drenching my stone, porous stone—what is this, travertine? Whatever it is it is long stained by the blood of others. Then rip the intestines from the belly.

Eviscerate as much as necessary. Disembowel. Enucleate too, for additional fun. Laugh in your Severan heart. ‘Til all in attendance have tasted the forbidden meat. Elites you’re not fond of, but will feed. Reach, eventually, the anal cavity by the end of excavation. Save this part for yourself, if you must. Taste your own spent semen in the rectum. And traces of fecal matter. This is where the small intestines meet the colon.

This is where you meet the columns. Of revelers. And of marble. And of slaves. Hear the music of crowds in the distance, hungry for blood. The birds above you, perched on the ledge of the atrium fluttering their wings, songs sung of violence.

Betwixt the columns of this colonnade, under this bright Roman sky, you laugh, and above the hearth, suddenly, you’re to be found there. Where she is interned—in an urn. As you turn, they also yearn to drink. Waiting for you. The chalice is hoisted and good grape imbibed in the name of Bacchus, as you laugh and weep inside for her.

Think of her as you dowse the whores. Gallons of vino. Bits of slave viscera gobbled. This also reminds you of her. The way she delighted in shredding flesh. The way she chewed organs. Swallowed some, spat out others. Pray to Janus for something new, a new gate, a new beginning, a new future. Do not let them see you weep on the outside, do not let the water fall from your eyes. Hold onto your melancholia. Secret it way, perhaps inside the whore whose ass is rising before you, rising like a slave rebellion, like oblivion. The violence in her back that arches, her asshole that puckers, her pussy that drools.

Shove her face into the cock before her. Allow a moment for her spittle to slather the dingus. See the stupid grin on the countenance of Hierocles. A golden countenance, perhaps you’ll marry, this beautiful charioteer. Then wind the thick mane of coiled whore hair around your fist. Yank back the hair, pulling her face up towards the square of blue in the ceiling of the atrium. Your cock assaults her ass. Drain the vino from your goblet. Praise Bacchus. Then, quickly, fingers are snapping. Cock thrusting, invested with imperial authority. Hail a slave as they hail you, Imperator. Your glory undeniable. Command of the slave, one drum of vino and one drum of garum. Certainly, the meat of a dead slave is best served with vino and garum. Continue fucking in the interum.

The vino and the garum arriving. Dress in a woman’s tunic and order a slave to fuck you. Then, fuck the slave in its ass when you issue another order: saturate the gamboling bodies, playful and gay, these selected bodies of Roman citizenry. Watch them plump, pump, pahrump against each other—fucking, sucking, eating, imbibing, vomiting—oblivious to the dispensing drums. It washes over them. Stains their skins. They continue to fuck, suck, eat, imbibe, vomit. A floor rosy with petals of blushing skin.

Cum into the slave, withdraw, raise your hand. Three fingers to Elysium. A signal. The centurions unleashing their beasts. Lions. Hierocles at your side. Enjoy from your balcony: terror, screams, naked bodies leaping with no escape. Enjoy from your balcony: a roar of lions, claws ripping up bodies, fangs sinking. Enjoy from your balcony: a rising tide pool of fluids: vino, garum, cum, vomit, blood. Piss and shit too, you can well imagine. Smile when you think of the masticated bodies in manticore maws reminding you of her. When bored, raise your hand.

An earthly revolution later, raise your hand again. See your commander beside you, hand quivering by your command. In his grip a bow, its string pulled tight as the lyre, prepared to sing music of a violent sort. An arrow has been plucked from the quiver. Hail Caesar! they say. The despicable child, say their eyes. See an inventory of crying babies, the offspring of savages, in a huddle. Stand with Elagabal to your back, tanning your calves.

Survive assassination by Praetorian mutiny. Thwarted by your cunning and by the grace of Elagabal. Mutineers now crucifying in gilt sunset. Watch until sky flame dims across your inchoate features.

Earthly revolutions bring endless columns of crucifixions. In the stiffening, seeping, stinking bodies, tacked to wood, think of your glory and the glory of Rome but also of the glory of battle death. Still waiting to die in sand, crushed under muscle and points, beneath the warmth of Elagabal. Silently curse Virtus and Bellona for still not taking you in battle. For not bearing you into Elysium. When the spears and blades and teeth pierced your skin and left you broken and scarred. But, swiftly now, correct your mind and your heart and pray for forgiveness from Bellona.

Recall the glory of events witnessed at Bellona’s temple. Recall the priestly bearing and the ceremonies. The flames and the burning oils and the incantations. Recall the blood that wept from priestly limbs in sacrifice to Bellona. Recall the holy javelin heaved by the head priest in Germania’s direction, another declaration of war. The peace of the spear as it sailed through perfect Roman blue like a ship. Feel the way it sank into sand when it landed.

Find yourself, once again, in Germania. Staring down savage Germans. Barbarian bearing. Find yourself weary from sleepless dreaming. But also wild with war. Feel the sweat that slides down your back in the heat of Elagabal. The swords clang, ring like eternity. The blood seeps into the earth, nourishes the soil. Enjoy the fear in the eyes of this German as you tussle, face-to-face, sinking blades into one another. Feel the way Scipio Africanus must have felt when he crushed Hannibal, ground Carthage into dust so many years ago.

This is when you make an example of this German, now laid prone on cold earth, by sinking your pugio into his perineum and running its fine edge skyward. Remove the cock and testicles. Raise them high above your head where they are kissed by Elagabal. Notice the blood weeping down from the severed organs, clutched in your fist. A sad splat of small sound when you toss these bits at the body of the dying German.

That evening, on the banks of the Rhēnus, when the heat of battle has feasted on your fibers and soul, and a great deal of Roman-Emesan blood has wept from your gashes, and the graceful death gift of Bellona has once again escaped your shoulders, dip your body into the cleansing river to freshen your brow. Remind yourself in the revitalizing quench that there must be some reason, some purpose Bellona does not honor you with victorious battle death. Emerge wetly naked and tend to your wounds.

Tend to matters of your cock with boys and whores and vino back in Rome. Slip drunkenly beneath night shadows of Trajan’s Column and run your hands across the base and skywards toward the stony frieze—storied victories over Dacia ejaculating into clouds. Warriors taken by glorious war in the name of Rome long before you were born. Read through crossed eyes their bloody adventures. That which has been denied of you. A sting in your old heart.

Allow yourself to once again be entertained by Praetorian Guards, the wooden bow now in your old hands loaded with the arrow, quivering but freed from the quiver. Pause before tipping your brow, insist on being called Empress, in your ladies tunic, if you like—before the German baby is flung into Roman skies, before the arrow is sent sailing, before it sinks into soft pink skin. Weep in your soul as another is queued, screaming. Liberate yet another arrow. For so long, barbarian baby bullseyes have been favored in your pastimes. They offer little now.

Offer yourself other amusements instead: don a disguise, whore yourself in the taverns. Hoist some vino and splash it blindly down your gullet. Listen to centurion stories that curl your graying hair, your softening heart. Consider this rumor: a Germanic gladiator, having secreted away in the latrine, suicided himself on a xylospongium. Consider how many Roman assholes it saw before choking a Teutonic throat. The corpse less fortunate was still fed to the lions of the Circus Maximus. The crowd showed mild amusement when the body soared into sky by beasts. Then shredded and consumed. It killed one with sickness. Xylospongium seen too many dirty assholes, perhaps. Feel your throat tighten and your stomach quake.

Find unrest in your imperial heart and unrest in theirs. Listen to the death plot and consider. Perhaps this is what Bellona has foreseen for you. To see Elagabal’s light bouncing off their sharpened pugios. To blink then see your own end.

Finally, the urn is betwixt your hands, which are swelling mighty with imperium. But feel the despair of loss. Feel the way her fur rubbed against your legs and along your fingers. Feel the whiskers on your face as you once did, while eye water falls to sand. It seeps to the water table, finds passage to groundwater, colludes with blood and minerals, trickles into the Tiber where your corpse will be dumped, spits out at Ostia into the Tyrrhenian Sea, sucks up into rainclouds, doubles back, showers over Roman soil, cools your face.

That afternoon, retire from the heat of Elagabal and shade yourself betwixt the columns of the colonnade. Walk slowly with mother, now so feeble and gray, through the peristylium. Stop before your shrine of Elagabal and pray to the dark baetyl rock.

Later, see the marble floor—the grain and the veins and the swirls, stained once dark crimson, now olive vaguely. Where lions recently orgied, gorged.

Summon a slave. Make it fuck you while Hierocles watches, then murder it together.