My love's an artist whose central goal
Is to conjure a collective around him
Who would unite to make him whole.

Feeling his friends' successes surround him,
He's struck out in many modes,
Resentment growing as silence confounds him.

He missed the decade of steel-clad odes
To vaudevillian death and displays 
Of flame and sparking electric nodes.

But really he wants a legion which stays 
Loyal to something he can hold,
Be it him or some movement ablaze,

He needs something to help unfold 
The riddle of his history.
He needs help, his story's untold.

It's all that he insists to me,
He needs a following but seems barred
From all contact. Is this to be

His life, spent in disregard,
Ignored and obscure, unimportant
And immured in paintings charred

And dumped in some landfill assortment?
I try to tell him, but what do I know,
Attentions are fickle and discordant.

He's sure he'll die with nothing to show,
No idea or accomplishment
To force the world to take a slow,

Long look at his complement
Of nightmare arches and windows,
To see his soul in astonishment.

The myth and magic held within those 
Doors to worlds beyond our own,
He searches despondently for symbols,

Figures which he hopes to clone,
Bridges he would replicate
To make a way from his corner alone.

The moments passing dessicate
The prison cell we'll call his domain.
Who'll succor as we supplicate?

He'd build the mechanical train
Of automata Daedalian;
If no one else, they'd remain.

They would be his daily in-
struments and aides, but could they talk;
Could he discuss the salient 

Values of being as they walk
Together on the river's shore?
They might only tell like a clock.

Of course the interpersonal core
Demands what senses cannot say
Without the heart to give them more.

Conversations gunmetal gray
Sting when brought into the light.
Rather bring him a band to pray

With and feast the sacred rites
Which keep a spirit's wavelength true;
Brothers to make love worth the fight,

A legendary army who
Found strength in war and love alike,
The kind that ancient Thebes once knew:

Lovers poised to fiercely strike
Side by side in phalanxed ranks,
Surviving by the spearhead's spike

And beloveds' shields protecting the flanks
Fate has chosen for them twice,
Earning and giving double thanks.

Nothing since approaches a slice
Of their bond, and yet a fraction,
Even only earnest advice,

Would help to vindicate his actions,
Any step toward a base
Of comrades he can call his faction.

He's still running, still in the chase
For eyes and ears to bring forth hands.
Frantic pursuit. What is this place?

There was only one Sacred Band,
Even the deepest attempt to scour
The world couldn't find that strand

Of bond, which until the final hour
Is ever loving, ever loyal.
Perhaps by bones with magic power

Fruit could flourish from his toil,
Dragon's teeth in Theban soil.