BRUTUS

You are three ancient and glorious birds! Shall I say women? Is it true your cloaked faces are so haggard a glance upon them will turn flesh to stone?

From my knees with face choking on the dust of your forgotten shrine’s floor, my eyes swollen with tears, I beseech you to awaken! I offer my blood and to kiss your dainty feet with fondest supplication.

Sing of Brutus! 

Reveal how Brutus is sired by a fallen god, orphaned, and carried away by a flesh-devouring witch.

Tell how Brutus enters the world of men a feral child. Is it true an old farmer finds and raises him, and as a boy he pulls the plow with bulls strength?

Sing of the raging battles! When the lines clash and Brutus is there, does blood truly flow as a river? Are men hewn down like wheat, heads and limbs sent twirling, bowels made to spew from opened bellies, corpses piled into mountains?

Sing of the brothels, taverns, and opium dens our returned champion calls home!

But mostly, let us know of Brutus’s heroic deeds – how he confronts the gods and evil men, leaving annihilation in his wake. Our salvation?

Let us ponder with sickness whether our eldest brother has broken our chains.

I implore you old girls at the cost of my soul! Stretch out your wings, dust them off, and sing! But please don’t show your faces until the end. Stone will shatter at the shrill of your sweet, discordant voices!

Unveil your perfect breasts! Offer our mouths rosy nipples dripping with cold, salty milk!

Teach us greatest beauty is laden with sourness.

Sing of Brutus!