Dionysos

Looking for the angel, the twin,

I was lost

brutal in aloneness.

Castle River, goat country,

snow on north sides of ditches, late May.

I was pretty sure I could pick up the phone

outside the Pharmasave on Railway St.

and be talking to Suhrawardi the cloven, the self-blade.

He came into town, which was known as

broken Aleppo,

it was thought generally, in the market, he was a donkey driver.

He was drunken velocity, drinking himself.

He took wads of logic and metaphysics as he coursed past,

light pregnant and clear held

to the nose.

Malik, regent, Malik Zahir, curved to his aggressive floating.

Malik, son of Saladin, no beard yet, none to speak of, peaked wax jaw.

His father, father of Malik, Saladin, from his curved prow craft

Of dried lymph and serum, said

kill him.