Impotent, Andronicus lieth down.
He flails like a fly on its back.
And the dour, scornful Judges pass him by.
Aaron, grinning, chops off Titus’s hand.
It twitches, then fists.
Lavinia weeps, kneels, collapses,
Still red in mouth and wrists and thighs –
Red like that sink of grief, the heart.
Appears a Messenger with two Andronici heads,
Still improbably blond, and a fire-charred hand.
Sets down heads, that bump across the table,
Fall, bruising, on the red-tile floor,
And sets down a scorned, charcoal hand.
Exits.
Lavinia bends, kisses those lopped-off heads
With her lopped-tongue mouth.
Lavinia and Titus pledge some appalling purpose.
They kiss as only they can: a pact of steel.
A fly alights on the reject hand.
Marcus deems it the black symbol of Aaron,
And stabs the fly with a knife,
And stabs into Titus’s dead hand.
Lavinia overturns a heap of drab poetry tomes.
Titus, disturbed, helps her.
With a pool cue, he carves her name in sand.
Lavinia plops the stick in her mouth,
And guides it with her stumps.
Achieving refreshed literacy,
She I.D.’s her violators.
She pictures how two pricks had her pinned.
How their steel wool scraped her race and sex.
Enter Aaron, Chiron, and Demetrius at one door
And at the other door, aroused Lucius,
With a bundle of arrows with verses inked thereon.
Black brass peals, black copper night echoes.
Enter Nurse with a blackamoor infant.
Aaron unsheathes his blade and seizes his heir,
Queen Tamora’s royal prince.
He jabs the Nurse through her breast,
Impaling her like a rat.
Exeunt nauseated Demetrius and Chiron,
Lugging off the Nurse’s gore-pumping body.
Enter Titus, angry Marcus, terrifying Lucius,
Leading a posse brandishing bows.
Titus carries a dozen poem-poisoned arrows.
He arms his backers, who shoot lustily.
“What is murder? Just a trochee.”
Enter Emperor Saturninus and Empress Tamora
And her two quivering, quail-like sons,
The perfect prey for cock-scalding schoolgirls.
Saturninus reeks of ostentatious fornications –
Doggy-style, often with lambs.
Tamora, Cleopatra-like, tongues her lips.
Saturninus brandishes in his hands the arrows
Titus’ Trojans launched his way.
He curses, “They swear out verses against my eyes.”
He fucks off under guard.
Enter a Goth, in chainmail body armour,
Leading Aaron with his babe snuggled against his chest.
Another Goth, in khaki, brings a ladder, which Aaron,
At sword-point, is pricked to climb.
A third Goth places Aaron’s child on the ground.
They will prod Aaron to fall upon his infant son
And his sword simultaneously.
Instead, as Machiavellian as a banker,
Aaron bargains:
“I’ll expose the dainty conspiracy,
The jokes of crime,
That cut the Andronici to exquisite pieces,
Just cradle my perfect son.”
Agreeably, he is borne from the ladder.
He is shackled like any nigger with a dagger.
Bravado of trumpets, saxophones, guitars, drums.
Black flags and black horses descend blackly upon Rome,
Imperial abbatoir.
Smells of tar and fire singeing the air.
Tamora’s sons knock, and Titus, aloft, with papers,
Unlocks his library door.
Their faces dazzle with guilt.
Quickly, the boys are beguiled, bound, gagged,
And strung up by their heels in the kitchen –
A Mussolini and a Petacci.
Enter Titus and Marcus with a cleaver,
And happy Lavinia with a basin.
She pipes up, “Dearie, the works?”
Titus opens the pale throats of Tamora’s pups.
Violent shivers quake their dripping bodies.
Exeunt omnes with the two cadavers –
Throats split like vaginas.
Now blustering Saturninus and Tamora, guarded,
Enter Titus’s home.
Trumpets guffawing, a table is plumped up.
Enter Titus, regaled like a cook, placing the meat dishes.
Glides in Lavinia, nun-like, black veiled, stately,
Her tart tits shivering her thin, taut shift.
The meat smells pinkly of pig, but is not really.
It is tasty, savoury, and Tamora chews peacefully,
Devouring her sons like they deflowered Lavinia.
Titus, jovial, unveils the Mona Lisa-like Lavinia,
Whose smile digs a red well.
He knifes her as he tastes, one last time,
That mouth like a rose – dewy, petalled, and thorny.
Before anyone can do anything,
Titus stabs vomiting Tamora, in her eye.
Saturninus thrusts his sword through Titus.
In sweaty consummation.
With an axe, Marcus smacks Saturninus’s face.
Mashed, shamed, with steel slicing his forehead,
That hole in his head almost goes straight through.
The Goths clatter in and corral Marcus and Lucius.
The imperial guards, pacified, await news,
And Marcus says everything,
Just by pointing out Aaron’s bawling, mixed-race babe.
Exeunt the healthy from the diseased house.
Exult, some guards shouldering Emperor Marcus.
A long crisis now of trumpets, foxily nervous,
As the murderous Andronici descend.
Old-fashioned, dreamy, Marcus kisses Titus.
Lucius kisses Titus, opulent murderer.
The white moon skirts darkness;
Light drops to the earth and dies.
The ocean pierces the beach:
Daggers of water plunge home.
Summon Aaron under needling guard,
Demanding his son, his infant boy.
His crucifixion is spat out, fixed up,
But his son is swaddled and nursed.
Exeunt omnes with the corpulent, imperial bodies
And the sumptuous, martial bodies
To be blazed with tears, then fire.
Finis the Tragedy of Titus Andronicus.
December 15, 2008
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December 15, 2008
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