“Civilization is an artificial order imposed on nature.”
—Camille Paglia (Camino Real, Cancún)

Rain salts the glass, the channels hiss and bloom—
a game show mouth, a prophet selling knives.
I watch the gods dissolve in polyester gloom,
each myth reduced to fire sales and lives
half-lived on points. The minibar blinks red.
A dolphin keychain grins from plastic racks;
sunset postcards, laminated for the dead,
repeat the same three clouds in tidy stacks.
I circle by the indoor pool—no Polycletian
torsos, no pure arithmetic of thigh—
but soda-bellied boys in chlorine skin,
their mothers drifting past with vacant eyes.
A towel snaps shut the pagan in my blood.
They rinse my bronze delirium to mud.

“Teenage boys, goaded by their surging hormones,
run in packs like the primal horde.”
— Camille Paglia (Caribbean coast of Mexico)

The mermaids swing their bodies beach
to beach—like skipping stones that never sink;
they don’t suspect how far the rip tides reach
or how the sea is seething as they drink.
The Marquis purrs when hipbones slap the waves—
a gasp, a jolt, a laugh that could seduce;
Camus would note a stranger learns to crave
the shine of sweat that justifies abuse.
The boys—like oiled gods in mirrored shades—
strike statues in the surf, each sweaty boast:
a promise made of flesh the sun remakes;
Dionysus leaps and hammers down the post.
Those hips, that heat, that final feral act:
a scholar licks the salt off every fact.