I hold a wolf by its ears.

I can’t pair or hold your hand

but leave your gaze in a well

watching TV. “I’m tired of this.”

No Parthian conquest for sure.

Easy to let cable’s maw,

stomach, and peloric waves

digest our fidgety silence.

In glowing atriums, TV ventricles,

an emperor secludes himself,

hears the news of the day ---

white teeth gnash the marrow of waves ---

Sejanus stabbed for treachery,

Livilla, his mistress, starved, and

Julia, already exiled from her lusts,

at the peninsula’s toe, falls headward,

collapsing, retreating.

We don’t blink between channels.

copyright,  © 2007 Eric Reymond