Kronos

Eternities I have survived
Under your stone, where Mother brought
Me mellowed wine and magic fruit,
I grew up in the dark like ivy
On the north-most wall of the palace.

The son of sky and Earth, your lips
Devoured all my siblings, smacking
Like fat fish against one another in the stream,
Your cheeks are cluttered with stitches and seams,
The sight of you a bitter yellow bile under my tongue.

Mother Rhea, the always-victim, forever-sad,
She clapped and pranced around me,
Greasy seal. Sick and swollen from mourning
With boulders for hips and butter-jars for breasts,
Groaning as she limped on pillars of her legs.

She fed me ambrosia and hatred for you, you
Whose words - too sacred for her morbid body.
Bathed me in tears and pleaded to the skies -
To Saturn and his glistening stars,
To vaporise his fated son. Once and for all.

By will of Mother, by her jelly arm like pig lard,
I never set my eyes on your complexion
And never yet witnessed a feast you served,
To which my Mother Rhea came dressed in black silk,
Cold but a mat under your soles.

No bird of meaning ever fled her mouth
Which would then fly into your hardened cochlea.
No malignant look, no tug of hand -
She stood a statue, heaving in cement,
Though good even a statue was she not.

And now here I do stand, metal to floor,
Blade knife in matured hand, clammed with gold.
I need to kill you. Now,
I see you for the first time since.
How could I so?

I witness now your wrinkled brow
And deep, black gashes of your under-eye -
You’ve had no whiff of happiness, of light caramel,
Of blooming rose or tulip. You are old,
Rhea is stumpy, sluggish and a lousy wife
And mother, too.

Yes, I will kill you, Father,
But out of pity do my duty,
For now I feel for you.