The Rampant Gust by Ray Succre

He assembled weapons as his dignity
and called to beasts in belief,
“We’ve a project to start, ten, twenty, more.”
Like instigating mites, a cat’s ear flicker,
they caused history to bottle a single blink.
They worked about him, pledged, privileged,
slaved, like moth-flight, tittered atop open heat,
unable to escape a flame in a room.

His wants were a labyrinth drenched by sweat
and spit, so grievously bloody, its own manager
could no longer navigate it, and so he failed
or succeeded, died into an afterlife of pages.

He existed dozens of times across as many eras,
Napoleon, Kahn, Hitler, Alexander the Attila the
returning, rampant gust of war.

He was a basic man that could damn human rivers,
choking them to cease as they wrote out his name
on the banks.

Ray Succre