before Mary, with all ducks lined up in a row,
everything she could need or want: Lord Byron.
When Mary casts herself past John, or, later, me,
who she sees is always Byron. What she sees
attendant on the crown prince of the Satanic
School never changes: big motorcycle, big penis,
big drugs. Motorcycle, of course, in its nineteenth
century equivalent. Not to mention big brains.
The man who has, and is, everything. Neither John
nor I could ever be good enough. Mary is often
quiet, but the monster in her of awesome greediness
leers at the thought she should submit to anyone
but the mad, bad, dangerous to know one, who reigns
supreme in her heart. Mary wears contacts, of course.
When she reads, she uses specs. It could never be
guessed, she thinks, that her own personal Loch Ness
Monster, of ferocious appetite for every kind of experience,
could ever be spotted beneath all the mutable water.
With her Nessy lurks the sense of using people like
John does, as vassals & vessels, & luring useful ones
to their doom. Willy-nilly, she reads, & has imagination
around reading. I had her, before I had her. Even if I
did turn out to be rather a Plato’s Cave shadow-play
version of her beloved, who was (she never forgot)
another January birthday, another eccentric rebel.
She liked Shelley, too. He was a demon-conjuror.
As for me, I did what I could. I scored as Keats.
© Adam Fieled 2025
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