SJ Fowler

{Jus Primae Noctis}

He could’ve been a colonel in the army.

King of the moth squad,

with his great grandfathers name, easily he could.

But he was not born on sacred soil.

He looks the part, but only just.

She can shut her knees all she wants.

This memory of military degradation has returned

him to sense. He is no rapist!

He has never been a man who needed to take

anything by force.

Just because he has the stomach for it (who doesn’t?)

does not mean that he would.

She opens her legs in pain and he stabs the blade

into her inside thigh. He cannot hear her shout.

The spray is fine at first and he has to stand

away to not get doused in the blood.

She will loose consciousness and though they will not

be able to save her,

they might try beyond the blue still living,

which will look better on the news.

The artery has opened up now.

The blood is coming in ways he did not know it

could. The body is forceful & final.

It will soon pool about the entire toilet. His

distraction is theft.

SJ Fowler

{I am a dancing Cathar, married twice, looming incest}

he enters a double door that carries the face of a bookcase

                   & descends into that rare subbasement

                               to carry on with those who struggle in her name, Jus Primae Noctis!

                       I help them to place a bag under the Museum.

                                                 & the ghosts are welcome to me.

                                                 they are dead for a reason & jealous sweep

                                        I will return the place again to Montague’s fields

                         & raise the Uncle’d spectre that they have forgotten. Complaint

               I do not think they will speak Dutch, or Latin.

                           I think they will just come for everyone I have known.

                  so the incentive grows. A crutch

                           if it cannot roam it cannot be. It must return then,

                                                   to brack &  hood & cea

             it will not be the good half of me that’ll stick to their fingers when it goes

       not the lowerhalf

                            I will not be in sight when the tomb rises in fire.

                                    no notice will be given. That day is this day.

                       the colossal rat

               clearly beneath the white binds it is beginning to cry

          the words beneath the cloth are inquisitive

                                                  there are no apologies or exclamations.

                  it bites down trying to predict the blows.

  I                                       always chewing, trying to sever the gag.

                                                      it cannot save itself now.

                                                            more hitting, more irregular blows,

                                  always with the closed hand.

                               He does not put everything in.

{Nafkhae is the name of that particular form of air or vapour which the angel gabriel is said to have blown or caused to pass from his coat sleeve into the windpipe of Mary for the purpose of impregnation}

during the night, I need to be calmed.

She has bad news. Porphyria is dead.

.

The shape so different from the other girls.

The last time she saw me she was drunk and singing,

her bra sweated through, her arms lacerated, refusing to heal.

The bottle in her hand broken, and her still drinking from it,

wincing at the taste, mocking me, singing so loudly,

deafening the others and she liked me, loved me,

slept with me because I laughed over her falls,

laughed as she sung white power anthems

outside of the off-licences by night and pharmacies by day.

Shouting at the top of her lungs ‘six million lies’,

getting the elderly at bus stops to join in,

wiping billiard balls over my lips,

still warm like platypus eggs from where they had just recently rested.

Porphyriagena is dead. She lies dead.

I must go, lest they suspect it was me.

Clearly she died of cullagium, of poisoning,

but how terribly I would be beaten before they realised this

and confirmed it so.

She wasn’t even that old, she was twenty years old.

Her death cannot be in anyway related to me.

Just a coincidence. None the less…

I leave her undisturbed behind me and do not close the door in my wake.

I need a rest, I seek a massage.

SJ Fowler

{Benedict IX, elected Pope at the age of ten shocked

the sensibilities of a barbarous age}

to traipse about the Museum

without even the faint possibility of seeing her

her torch light is doused

she stayed but a month

she let me sleep at her feet but once

Oh Evgeniya Akhmadulina!

but back they sent her

to meditate on the indistinct

to cultivate the wastes

then they told me she was a spy

no lambblood to her name,

but she was one of the ones I loved.

just the thought of the London Aquarium

and the degenerate art Museum

it hurts my webbed redchest

my nocturnal appendix surgery

I miss her more than that organ!

Everything seems older and less colourful.

no Saint Fisher, no benefactor will read my lists

& pay off my debts, hand me on to the upper echelons

she left me amongst the brownfilm slashed;

her burning hair is shed & black about her green eyes.

life has become less promising,

and the people seem much older.