A maiden’s life is such a common tale,
That scarcely need the details be retold,
A mother through her spirits drawn and pale,
A father through his judgements too soon old,
A dash of young rebellion adds its spice,
Yet still unmarred by even petty crimes,
She trips through life led on by Fortune’s dice,
That cast themselves this way a million times,
     These dice are cast and we their numbers read,
     But what if fate had spawned from different seed?

Why not a “Y” where God hath writ an “X?”
How simple a divine omission made,
That might a lowly mortal thus unsex,
And gentle sheath replace with tempered blade.
More difficult by far to paint the sun,
With untrue stroke and errant pigment pale,
And painting thus the moon than to have done
What little Nature does to make a male.
     And what therefore is simple simpler than?
     Imagining our Julia a man.

To our imagining is Julian borne,
A babe nurtured in spirits overmuch,
With ne’er a single harsh regret to mourn,
Nor any mind that could consider such
To such degree as might dissuade his cods
From seeking out such libertines and whores
As easily make virgins common bawds
And thus defy the virtue he deplores.
     Behold the mildew’d portrait of a child,
     That by his own libido is defiled.

In every brothel, pub and molly-house,
Could evidence of Julian be seen,
From misplaced underwear to spunk-stained blouse,
To vile and vulgar venting of his spleen.
What bugger or virago old or young,
Knew not the face that thrust a thousand hips,
Yet by their fear of vengeance were so stung,
With Julian’s stinger that they closed their lips?
     So poor a life, more wealthy with disdain
     Than any lowly pauper could sustain.

To feed his overwhelming appetites,
He suckled fathers purse as mothers teat,
And bought with unearned fortune such delights,
As weaned him off of milk and on to meat.
Indulgent fathers money was the fuel,
That drove the cripple blindly to his fate,
His murdered loins had fathered such a fool
As soon would take his mother as his mate!
     So drunk betwixt her threatened sheets she lay,
     Awaiting her unholy wedding day.

The irony was lost in her forlorn
Prognostications of impending dread,
That on the day her Julian was born,
He also had demanded they be wed.
Aghast yet powerless, his cruel intent
Had dragged her to the peak of her despair,
So cornered thus she cried her own lament,
And dealt a blow no surgeon could repair,
     Before her teat her grown son’s teeth caressed,
     She’d sooner taken adders to her breast.

With leaden skies of morning this hard news,
Found Julian, but struck his heart in vain.
This trifle only fired his evil muse,
And bade him turn his loss to gruesome gain.
He went about with all as had been planned,
The priest retained, the table settings laid,
His less than blushing bride was made to stand,
By rigormortis, and the upstairs maid.
     So horrified, a herd of guests like cows,
     Stood dazed as he exchanged their wedding vows.

The shock dispelled, the guests fled in disgust,
All save for those invited by the groom,
For these were of a sort that shared his lust,
And soon a bawdy rabble swelled the room.
For hours they praised him for his sense of art,
They toasted him, and Julian grinning wide
Announced that dinner was about to start,
Though no-one marked the absence of the bride.
     The kitchen is a woman’s rightful post,
     But roasting mutton, not herself the roast.

The orgy thus began with food and wine,
In quantity to make a glutton faint,
And Julian enthroned as one divine,
Fell victim to his venomed mother’s taint.
From feasting on her innards underdone,
He sucked that leprous poison from her breast,
His score and ten years on this earth thus done,
His sins his mother’s death thereby redressed.
     Goodnight thou foulest fruit of woman’s womb,
     And flights of harpies shriek thee to thy doom.

Rejoice oh gentle reader that in life,
Instead of my dread phantasy you dwell,
You’re Julia’s friend instead of Julian’s wife,
Your soul not quite as surely bound for hell,
So wander through your days, but have a care,
(The fates are quite capricious with their thread,)
That any happy birthday find you there;
At tender thirty married, stuffed, and dead,
     And all that breathe from heaven down to earth,
     Bewail the dreadful error of thy birth.