Destiny
was eighteen,
dreaming of college
and a one-way ticket
out of that one street town
when Momos rolled past
on his chopper
having left the first wife,
three children,
and Patty Feathers
a stripper with nine cats who kept him in designer clothes.
Destiny parked that night
behind the theater to meet friends.
Her head in the clouds
fantasizing about her birthday, leather boots, and boys
as she pushed through the beaded curtain,
into the rooms in the back of Zeus’s Everything Shop,
meeting Momos for the first time,
fresh from his shower, a towel wrapped around his waist.
His moist skin was scrubbed and sweet-smelling.
His jive was as smooth as the fat marijuana cigarette he offered her.
Momos plowed every juicy female that crossed his path.
He tried to win Destiny that way, too, but she snubbed the ride.
Provoking his quest.
They soon met at a local dive. Destiny and Momos drank Southern Comfort, chased with Budweiser.
Shot for shot, they drank until a one-eyed Momos begged her to drive him home. And a besotted Destiny beheld her future.
He’d captivated her by walking a lobster on a leash,
hustling the drunks for money as he fed them the cherrystone clams, Snaps
the lobster had cracked with its claw.
And stunned her when he reached under her shirt and exposed her
to the bartender, like she was the prize at an outlaw biker rally.
Momos promised her the world.
Both dangerous and different, she craved his ilk.
Three years later,
even their infant couldn’t convert her.
She’d made her bed.
Momos was now her god.
His passion was hypnotic and biting.
His commands bled from her ears.
He burned his mark deep, lest she forget her place.
Her fate darkened
as Momos
pinned another vicious note
to a graphic sex manual with a switchblade,
her shortcomings were highlighted in red.
In time, Destiny became a beast, too.
Destiny studied. She became proficient at
“The Ways of the World,” according to Momos.
She understood that none
of his friends would appreciate his art class.
The words he spewed
and punched
into her face, her palette of black eyes.
The way he offended her allies.
Beaten down, she waited. Ridiculed, she waited.
Terrified, she waited.
Hopeless, she remained.
Until Zeus looked down from Olympus
and saw what Momus had done,
and a dreadful Destiny rescued her journey.
Momos however, remained the same.
Power mad atop his plinth, he continued to lament, boast and blame.
Time passed before
they spoke.
Momos the frantic talked in circles.
He spewed
harbingers
declaring
he’d grown humble
after the attempted murder,
after the charges were dropped
and after she’d left him;
that his new conquest was a fill-in for her.
He professed to all that could hear
that he still loved his Destiny.
But Destiny was no longer his to claim.
Soon, Momos the miserable mocked the gods again.
Dragged his new soul mate by the neck
through her car’s open window.
Vowed to drive her to Hell for defying him. For saying no.
Heroic, she summoned the men in blue and Kratos the Enforcer to file her grievances.
Despite this, the fugitive fire in Momos raged on.
He became like Cerberus,
loyal guard dog,
compelling
The Fates
to impose their leaden doom
fusing his gifts and his skull
to a lower calling. And Hades sighed as the river Styx rose to greet him.
Corney Press 