Whose weeping is the erosion of her granite
Andalusia
Whose Moors whooped in funerals and proceeded sparing charm
Pounding passion drums
Drunken scorched under sneering Christian suns
Cordoba
Whose sapped inspiration inspires the weeping of a poet
Music
Whose tongue lashes out in shaken love ecstatic
Adorned with roses prim and fine from Limousin
Arranged around visions romantic
Cordoba
Whose honey attracted flies
Derision
Whose mothers spat and wailed like tomcats
At this phage of a king’s feudal press on sons
And the untold, unearned well-meaning sums stolen close-eyed
Cordoba
Whose bastard sons begat more bastards
Whose cousins cut heads to pin Granada’s tongue
Whose pupils shoot darts to Toledo sleeping trance-eyed
Whose bullcharge promises to break the bones of Europe
Conclusion
Whose promise is always empty
Cordoba
Where Francis Bacon and I debate knowledge
Whose sleeve-hidden card is that you cannot see it
Whose hasty flight wraps men up in auburn blankets
Whose anxious slip off cliffs commits us both to death
Cordoba
Whose sun sings a-cappella a song of death in slow-grind
Holy Roman father
Whose hands pull strings of a cult that follows fervent
Marionette who received her point-of-view on a mailcard
“From the Holy See to me”, signed the Father
Cordoba
Whose true love died in chains wearing wreaths so bloodied
Paris
Whose Franks raped Rome unready to give up gemstones
Away with the sterling, flat-pounded denarii and Caesar’s crown
Give it up to Brutus
Cordoba
Whose love trampled razors to prove it’s dedication
Relief
Whose stone-etched eyes bear lines of sleepless eons
Whose pilgrims prayed for rain and got Gomorrah in trouble
Who tantalized Sodom in the sand to stray from it’s God-given grain
Cordoba
Whose kiss is sweet, whose sting is sour as sickness
Decay
Whose gnarled hands recollect an air of acrid age as if fluid paraffin
Over peaks of Hispanic mountains hiding hatred or gold
Stretching arch and brittle over the bones of El Cid
Cordoba
Who would burn you to powder in a sharpened summer scene
Plagiarized from scenic tourist pamphlets
They appear in the post and mother often checks
Insider
Caught and strung up for poaching
The king’s own royal venison
God’s great deer is his to endear, you know
Cordoba
Who is a city, a girl and a graveyard
Conclusion
Whose promise is almost always empty
