Legendary

It's nothing short of miraculous
that humanity survived the prehistoric.
Civilizations how have we managed?
Survival of fittest, survival of opportunists?
Certainly not survival of the kindest.
The meekest are usually the first put on the block.

Manuela was a prostitute. Manuela was retarded,
infested with every virus in the book,
a few yet undetected by modern day medicine.
Her teeth were rotten, her breath most foul
when the Black Plague decimated the Europe of then.

When Napoleon invaded centuries later,
Manuela's was even messier.
The lady was brothel and open air sewer.
In the streets from Antwerp to Moscow,
in Seville on to Bristol, last seen
begging and whoring, selling almost for free.

The lady was accursed.
She was green fog.
The multiple votive she lit, the gusts blew them out
She was a cork bobbing tired by a dock in the bay,
a syphilitic sore, a painful reminder
to history's spirited high stepping romance.