the love songs of many-a-zeus

and he smeared the word itself
this four-letter secret that everybody else
seemed to know

and smeared themselves
thousands of times

it lived
and breathed
and died.

chthonic souls turned angels that fucked turned gods made chaos their master love their master
perfection their master turned slaves, this slavery

masters him. he cannot escape
and reads,

i am a simple guy. enjoys walks in the park, movies, meaningful conversations, love that never dies, my strengths are all listed here, and the rest of them you can view where my photos they can tell you make you see tease you make promises to you that i am who i say i am and my love never falters.

he shakes his head, laughs, distrusts
he is seeker and sought
and when he enters their world

he is simply lost

and he has known
the simple ones
the beautiful ones
the poor ones
the proud ones

and he has known how it is to read these love songs, troths that began with a smile, a chest, roughened thighs

this exercise of excesses that they, "their people", employ and the masks that they wear and he wears making them "his people" and his options exercised to his liking

and reads,

i seize the day and take what i can. i take you. i tell you you are mine and mine alone but i am not yours never will be alone. i fuck you and fuck you up then move on. i seized the day. i seized you.

and then his music
his tomes
his passions
his life

life smeared with that word
it comes up again
his own fractured fable

him, filled with the faces and bodies
of those he collects
like numbers and rainbows
they are polychromatic, and unending

he collects them

he is collected

a toy.

and reads,

or blank space

this fear
he is you, yet he despises being him or him or him
he is better, he is nothing
part of and cut off from the whole

i do my own thing

it reads

and suddenly, the unnecessary becomes desirable
the untruths getting new skins of
longstanding reason;

and he strives to read
between the lines

before he is carried away
to become the immortal that he was fated to be
his beauty set in stone
his heart hardened by time
and

that word

forgotten; that song,

unsung.