Anthony Madrid

 

I Shall Sit Atop Olympus

 

 

I SHALL sit atop Olympus; I shall juggle dying worlds.

 

I shall trifle with Great Hatreds and toy with Young Love.

 

 

 

So, let the girl from Rose Apple Tree Island bring her famous box of paints.

 

Let her set to work with her single-haired paintbrush on the living face of the Queen.

 

 

 

Not for nothing do we maintain this race of bird-eating royal spiders.

 

Each precious abdominal hair follicle has its place in the Cosmetic Scheme.

 

 

 

Behold our palace foreman, wise in the ways of pleasure. He has a belt with a

 

Wheel of revolving dildos, like the lens turret on a microscope.

 

 

 

And when our scientific equipment fails us, we punish it with a hammer!

 

In the case of our most advanced equipment, we have to use a jeweler’s hammer.

 

 

 

In my culture, we know the outsiders by the fact they can’t answer our riddles.

 

“Father’s in the room; his beard is outside” is a ready-to-hand example . . .

 

 

 

But to sharpen his carpenter’s pencil, Madrid al -Katib has no need of a knife.

 

He just sticks it in his mouth and sucks. One suck and it’s sharp as a needle.