Asp

I am Cleopatra, not a woman,

Not a lover,

The dust-clad figure of an age

From the neck up,

Eyes like once upon a time and

Hollow, beating with a

Fainter pulse than seconds on a clock,

Frozen, baited with the promise of inertia,

Gross contestation of an insect bite

That should have forced a movement.

The snake and the Nile are one and the same,

Just as I am wont to be

With a starry night sky,

And if they are out of reach

I might settle for the ghosts

They leave in a midnight pool,

Phantom strokes of light

Brushed across a canvas with a Master’s skill,

A temporary art,

And I cannot grasp the waves or their definition,

Forced to throw a line and reel it in,

Empty as the gaze of a

Hundred billion faces trapped in time.