Conquest of the Persian Empire

Prince,
I sleep on a bed of centipedes and sharp wood corners.

I sew meager pillows

from all the colors you leave trail to,

(from your sinews and frame of olive bone corners)

you trail burgundy,

and white and the nighttime fog that
is your breath you cover me, all titian. A titan.

What holds these colors is something like
mean cotton, 5-thread-count, it ages my face,

and in return you give me nothing.

You stomp in, Alexander, and say: "I accept you as a gift from the Gods!"

and all my centipedes scuttle away. Prince, your tongue laps at the salt
under my eyes and so the soldiers cannot be paid. Prince,
everything before you seems ashes. The Gordion Knot is
nothing, you say,
and rubbing your olive skin, I reach the pit of nothing--
an antediluvian domain.