my own country doesn’t know
i’ve opened my jars
to men my founding father’s age–
if she did, then she would know
that she were partly to blame
for her cauliflowered-eared boy
whose mind & body wrestles with CPTSD
from being castrated from the Earth
so idols don’t need claim patronage
over lifestyles deemed disease

i took the burden, but now
have a spade in my chest where
a suit of hearts should be –
any man who asks to fill me now,
whether Roman or Byzantine,
i pour right into their Fruit of the Loom
with my Phrygian cap falling half-off –

then i spill their blood-alcohol
like a forty day flood,
to preserve my existence –
to remind them that i am something
ancient, not product of
radicalization in schools or
spilled chemicals in the water supply

Photo by Peter Foley/UPI