Graffito, interrupted. Flare end of scratch marks
where the improvised chisel dropped,
watchman’s shout scattering to lunar echo.
Blasphemy a youth-driven recklessness,
a compound crime the elders daren’t overlook.
In the blur of the rubbing the quick prick and slit
metamorphose into hammer and scythe,
a tale for brusque nights spent indoors,
winter storms wrapping the city in misery,
battling it out between sea and mountain.
The hooligans stumble in from the snow and wet,
are shushed into a corner as the entertainment
drones its memorized way. Blanket stretched
across four pairs of delinquent legs, scared
for the moment but warming to a rebound of disrespect,
snort-mouthed and spluttery, gutter-minding
every epithet to its missed graffiti, oomphing
each mention of the Spartan whore, large-breasted
at the ramparts of Troy, Achilles shin-deep
in the shingled slaughterhouse, bread loaf
hanging down to his pistoned, scar-crossed knees.
The watchman coughs into his sleeve,
asks forgiveness of the temple steps, the columns,
the sullied wall, though not of the goddess,
whom he has failed. He wraps himself in cloak
and moondrowned light and waits.
The goddess has written his punishment
on snow and rain and he waits,
numbering aloud each drop and flake.