[A]s it is said that no man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre, it may be concluded that few men can retain their position on the pedestal of genius vis-à-vis to one who has been behind the curtain[.]
          —Byron¹

                    *

I didn’t have a clue…I don’t know who that person is…she’s really a sort of Neanderthal version of me, really amœba-like, unformed…I’m very fond of her…but I didn’t know the impact I would have[.]
          —Madonna²

                    i.

Hail, O Geometer! Flowering
beauty grows, his good
looks are mirrored in
the eyes of all
around him, shields bent
to let in heaven’s
reflection. Scorch of noon’s
torch unending as he
courses the room, follows
attention, flows irreverent, burning

                    ii.

through its gathered observers’
incessant chatter as though
day were forever, strangers
a risen saint’s kneeling
congregation staring hard at
a raging resurrection. Going
forth glittering, fame’s conflagration
ebullient as a flame
walking thrown frames, working
pathways across portraits, waking

                    iii.

antique furniture forsaking conservation’s
conventions to savour having
pass over its demure
upholstery a party a
part of which ignores
history’s order to uphold
tradition, crackling wit tackling
its reservation with flickering
tongues of luminous conversation.
The ancient of days

                    iv.

mourns this newcomer’s performance.
A moment on couches
unaccustomed to being turned
over by one who
prefers to be adored
by those whose comfort
comes from being unable
to come any closer
to the source of
his warmth. Blinding company,

                    v.

sanctified in my own
rite, sacrificed to survive
the destruction of the
sanctuary, that I might
not get lost in
mythic time trying to
find your spark to
ignite the alchemical process
of libido. Shapes shifting
their beliefs in the

                    vi.

materials of which science
thinks they are made,
fuck each other over
in mercenary positions. Bulbs
crackle under foot. The
turning of bone to
blue when burned. An
island of a heart
with no combat on
its soil, only blood

                    vii.

running from love, doesn’t
believe anything it doesn’t
write, doesn’t like anybody
else trying to tighten
their grip on its
muscled fist. Magnifies or
ruins lives, translates only
to erase sorceries none
can say, only claim
made them weak, day

                    viii.

break, noon decay before
dusk carried away summer’s
transience, dissolved its evidence.
Laid to rest in
arms folding into a
chest what never was
but always will be
treasured, more than struggle’s
effort rewarded success. For
in the striving there

                    ix.

persists tenacious love which
only suffering can gift.
A single moment and
not the only one
of which one is
made, but prolongs if
only to hold onto
another whose changing face
memory relegates to an
invocation of a name.

__________
¹Lord Byron, on the cult of personality, celebrity, cultivating then exploding one’s personal mythology, and the dilemma of a person versus his persona, interviewed by Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, at Genoa, April–July, 1823, in Lady Blessington’s Conversations of Lord Byron: Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Ernest J. Lovell, Jr., published at Princeton, New Jersey by Princeton University Press in 2015; page 110.
²Madonna, opining on her early career and many æsthetic and musical evolutions ever since, to Kurt Loder, interviewed on-set during the filming of her music video for the single “Frozen,” taken from her studio album, Ray of Light, directed by Chris Cunningham and shot in the Mojave Desert at Cuddyback Lake, California, January 8^th, 1998, for MTV’s Ultra Sound: Inside Madonna, originally broadcast March 1^st, 1998; time codes 1:10 and 19:10–32.