Samson Reconsiders

One has to consider the material

conditions which produced this fate

-ful moment. A scatterplot of men slain

by jawbone. Violence as a kind of boomerang. Battle cries

at first sight of sun, the stretched bow

of these impossible arms, all that foreign blood

making magenta planets in the sand. Her beauty.

Enough gold to feed a family thrice over

if she budgets it right.

The most expedient option here

is to make this all about Delilah. Her easy

scissors. The vile ways of women lovely enough

to make you dry up the moat, damn the armor for scraps,

open the heart for new business, et cetera, et cetera.

But what about my player card?

The empty bed she could never bet on? What of the calls

from her countrymen, or their hungry gods, or the comeuppance

of a thousand boys left kinless by the same hands that held

her sleeping body like a lyre, built our kitchen table from scratch,

stroked her faithful, moonless hair every night

for minutes on end all because she once said

that it helped with the insomnia?