They said they’d never seen a man who hated flowers,

or edged his tongue like an instrument of war.

The verdant hills they whispered of this man so apt to sin

chimney smoke was pure as mountain snow compared to him.

He crawled out of a milky cavern yawning at the world

then clawed his way to the mountain’s peak

where newborns once were thrown.

The rain that fell was poison, and the rivers ran in blood,

he grew up in the hills out there in a house made of bones and mud.

The weirdest shrieks would shake the sky, and rattle the window panes

as the one-eyed man on the mountaintop hunted goblins in the caves.

When the blue went black and the rivers started frothing at the mouth

he fixed his eye on the village, and started his journey south.

His feet oozed pus and his fingers split as the exiled Gorgon climbed

with matted hair for umbrella and his ankle-bones as shocks.

The stones he touched all crumbled, and the trampled asters bled

he stood in the valley and grinned at the sun ‘til it dropped from the sky, cold-dead.

The children screamed with laughter at the man who walked in a shroud

his laughter wasn’t sweeter, but it thundered like a fury.

They’d never seen a man who cursed the fields, so they’d turn black

or walked into night in the middle of day, while they wished he’d never come back.

He stood in the valley and shook his fist, his other hand clutched a painted trowel

no one wanted to know what he’d been digging,

so he was swinging next week on an old ship’s rigging

wondering the reason burning rope smelled sweet

and he sort of liked the mottled purple color of his feet.

[Editor’s Note: Publication of this poem was made possible by a gift from Kewayne Wadley during our annual Kickstarter.]