Salome: Canto Three

When teenage schoolgirls feel their sexuality awake,
Sometimes, instead of eyeing any handsome boy
Who sits nearby in class,
They have a passion for the man who teaches them. They ache
For him to love them back. They'd rather not be coy:
They want to make a pass

At him. Another reason why these girls may wish to flirt
With their instructor is to get a better grade.
That grey-haired, old grotesque
Would not at all appeal to them; yet, if they lift their skirt
For him, he'll raise their test scores, and even give them aid
In their search for a desk

In better universities. Now, when Salome wants
A male instructor in a high school, it is not
For love or a higher mark.
There is a much more subtle reason she so often haunts
Her teacher's desk: she would the light of learning blot
And leave it in the dark

By soiling the good name of a teacher in a sordid scandal.
She'd tease and tempt him in the classroom. She'd undress,
And leave the door unlocked
For someone to come in while the lewd lecturer did handle
The girl's nude body. Guilty, he'd have to confess
To a school all stunned and shocked.

Salome did select a petite brunette eighteen years old
Attending a prestigious high school in Vermont
One day some years ago.
The man who'd be her prey was someone with a mind of gold:
His depth of erudition served what he did want--
To make the ignorant know.

He strictly marked his pupils' homework, unforgiving of
That careless, lazy, puerile mediocrity
That so disgusted him.
His mission, as he saw it, was to make them rise above
That philistine, brute superficiality
That makes bright thinking dim.

While his wild adolescent learners used TV to dull
Their (as he saw them all) already dormant minds,
He sharpened his with art.
He tried to use the Bard, Wordsworth, Milton, and Blake to lull
Them all away from shallow pleasures to where one finds
Joy with a deeper heart.

Well, one day svelte Salome came, knocked on his classroom door,
And asked for help with passages from Hamlet. He
Was happy to assist.
"What meant the Dane when asking that fair dame he did adore,
He spoke of country matters," asked the girl. "The key
To it," he said, "the gist

Of Hamlet's meaning is country's first syllable--a pun.
Without the O, it's understood." "I see," she said.
"And nothing: what of that?"
"Elizabethan slang for a girl's nether region--one
Pronounced it 'noting'," he explained, "sounding instead
Like 'an O-thing'." She laughed at

These wicked plays on words. "O, now," she said, "I understand."
"These naughty witticisms help the young to start
To have appreciation
For William Shakespeare's wealth of words; but then the student's scanned
Beyond the ribald, and has seen his spiritual art,
There is the realization

Of how profound was his sense of all men's psychology,"
He said, to make the girl forget the prurient parts,
And raise her spirits higher.
"Let me tell you of a wooden O, as in one history
Play it is called, the stage: where the dramatic arts
Burn their poetic fire."

As he said this to her, he thought of what a gift she seemed
To be, for never had he seen a girl with this
Much interest in books.
Moreover, how it touched his heart that her so sweet face beamed
At him! This bookish man had never had a kiss
From a girl with such good looks.

And now, her body seemed to say she really wanted him.
This never-married man always resented how
He hadn't found a mate.
When he was her age, all the girls would laugh at his then-slim
And awkward form, preferring muscle-men; and now
A girl with such a great

Potential intellectually seemed to have awed eyes
For him. He knew that all his other students hated
His harsh severity.
Indeed, his nubile nemesis just filled his ears with lies,
And hoped someone would see them after she was sated
On his tall lechery.

For she despised the very thing she seemed to have a passion
For: literature and study. Lust enlightened her,
And lies, thus, were her truth.
She'd snare him in her upside-down world in her usual fashion:
Bent-over, temptingly. Femmes fatales always were
Enticingly uncouth.

As he continued his attempt to elevate her mind,
The girl began her plot to raise something of his--
She did pointedly so.
Her panties fell onto the floor, airing her soft behind.
Unknowing, he would soon fall in a way that is
Quite similarly low.

She asked about the Bard's bawdy sonnet one-fifty-one
And what meant "rising at thy name, doth point out thee"?
How did he "rise and fall?"
Of course, she knew the answers; for this was how she had spun
Her web to snare him--making her prey willingly
Elaborate on all

Those lewd poetic passages, the easier to seduce
Him. She would stimulate his mind first, then his loins.
His lust would not be raised
With blatant sensuality. Salome thus made use
Of mental excitations. This kind of man joins
What is cleverly phrased

With the salacious, and she knew it. So, with subtlety,
She raised his spirits and his phallus, side by side;
And when the right time came,
She'd make him fall hard on the stony ground pitilessly.
She'd transform his insufferable pedantic pride
Into a crushing shame.

Not only did this man despise all those who lack of culture,
He had an animus for ideologies
That have crept in our schools.
Each radical with tenure seemed to him a circling vulture
That feeds upon the classics' carcasses: one sees
The words of "white male fools",

Not spiritual literature that can ennoble us.
Salome's teacher hoped to bring his students higher
By teaching just the best;
While those idealistic pedants, so ambitious
To spread diversity, to him do not inspire
The young to start a quest

For deeper meaning in their lives, but rather bring us down
To what is base and common. His elitism
Made all the faculty
Dislike him. Still, he had respect in that New England town
For his ability to turn defeatism
And insecurity

Into a new-found confidence, if pupils truly wanted
To understand what greatness is. Salome, though,
Preferred vulgarization
To excellence. To make him base and low is why she haunted
His classroom. Thus she lifted up her skirt to show
Matters of countrification:

Nothing--O! naught could jerk this teacher more that what he saw!
She slyly said, "You told me of some wood in O,
Well, how about it, then?"
Removing her remaining clothing, she made his slack jaw
Fall to the ground; and meanwhile, she made rise and grow
That happy part of men.

There were two spirits that were battling in the teacher's head:
One, hedonistic Herod, and the other, John--
That Apollonian saint.
The first would have the teacher pulled down on a sensual bed;
The other'd have him carried up to heaven on
A cloud, away from taint.

He noticed that Salome'd left the door slightly ajar.
Fearing that he'd be seen with her, he got up and
Went to the door to lock it.
With her initial plan thus foiled, she'd have to plan to mar
His name some place else. She knew that she had at hand,
In her miniskirt pocket,

A cell-phone that could double as a camera. She'd take
A picture of them both in bed. This was a spike
That would make sink the boat
Of his career forever. Meanwhile, he began to shake
And cough (he feared the fate she hoped for him), just like
In that song that Sting once wrote.

He said, "Please dear, get dressed, for we should not be doing this,"
For now, Saint John the Baptist was winning the battle
In his so warring soul.
Salome was indignant. "What? Without even a kiss?"
She snapped. She had a perfect way that man to rattle
And then regain control.

Still nude, she bent over as if to put her clothes back on,
With her behind before him, her legs spread out wide:
She made a Lambda shape.
"The letter Lambda is for Logos: are you to it drawn?"
She asked. "We should forget the flesh and look inside,
The superficial escape,

And probe for deeper meaning. Since you don't want to enjoy
My body, then I'll dress and go. But hear this, sir,
That if I leave this room
Now, and without you having me, I'll never be your toy.
You'll say, head in your hands, 'O, I could have had her!'
In most regretful gloom."

He thought not only of her country matters, or her O,
But of her so precocious mind. She wasn't just
Some common little tramp;
She could be educated...cultured...a companion! So,
After the two had satisfied their fiery lust,
He would become her lamp.

He'd brighten her, and raise her from her lowly origins.
In time, she would mature and learn to prize the mind.
Now of the age of consent
And graduated soon, she'd make it easy for him his sins
Completely to forget; then they could leave behind
Those lewd hours that they'd spent

At the beginning of their so forbidden liaison.
Wait, he'd forgotten: that dark past was yet to come!
Salome's backwards world
Disoriented him. Their future would with a cell-phone
Be captured, and his scandal-sodden fate in some
Motel would be unfurled.

Still, he knew nothing of her plans, and feared continuing
To live a life of loneliness, without a mate.
She was his only chance,
It seemed, to have a female; so he spoke of her O-thing
As something that he wanted. "First, let's have a date,"
He said. "Let me romance

You. I would like to treat you like a lady; so get dressed,
And I will take you to a charming restaurant.
We'll dine: I'll pay the bill."
"Alright, let's go," she said. She saw that he'd become obsessed
With her. This is exactly what the girl did want.
Of him she'd have her fill,

Then she would leave him empty and ashamed to show his face
In public, even though she proudly showed her skin,
Provocatively posed.
She put her clothes back on, and they went to a fancy place
With fine cuisine. He had a glass of red wine in
His hand, snobbishly nosed.

Disdaining in her mind her teacher's pompous posturing,
Salome tried again to bring the discussion down
To a licentious level.
She nonetheless with subtlety spoke more of her "O-thing";
For if she crassly spoke, she'd draw on his face a frown
And he'd reject this devil.

She knew that he adored the classics, and understood Greek,
So she discussed the Os of that old alphabet,
Omega and Omicron,
The "big" and "little" Os, respectively. She'd make him weak
With what made his mind strong. His king's heart she would get
And make of it her pawn.

"When my legs were a Lambda, my Omega did you prefer,
Or Omicron?" she asked with a lascivious grin.
He groaned, "O, darling, please,
Refrain from such obscenity here. Do try to inure
Yourself to higher things. Not everything is skin.
It would put me at ease."

As they were dining, she saw sitting at a nearby table
A female teacher from their school. He didn't see
This colleague who could kill
His whole career if she saw them together. She could label
Him a seducer of girl students, and with glee:
Indeed, she had the will

To do it, for she was one of those multiculturalists
That he always disdained; thus, she detested him.
Salome held his hand
So that the female teacher would, in anger, clench her fists.
To her, his affectation made him seem to be prim:
Now, all would understand

That he was just as low as all the people he derided.
Just like Salome, she'd use her phone's camera
To take a photo of them.
To have him terminated would be easy, for no one sided
With him at their school. With her, now the girl had a
Much better stratagem

For ruining the man. They finished eating their fine meal,
And left the restaurant in search of a hotel
On the other side of town.
Now he insisted on a far-away place, for he did feel
It should reduce the risk that anyone would tell
That he had gotten down

On one of his so vulnerable students. They arrived
At a motel out of the way. They found a room,
And stripped bare in the dark.
He eagerly possessed Salome, who more than connived
At his debasement; for this deed would be his doom--
She, merely, was its spark.

His noting of her Os so made her moan a whore's delight
That straight from Alpha to Omega she did rain
A flood of lust's release.
He rose and fell on her with such a wild and savage might
That this erstwhile mild-mannered man with a golden brain
Would absolutely cease

To be so recognized. Their sin complete, they lay in bed;
And as he slept, she got her phone's camera ready--
She aimed it carefully
So that the picture clearly would include each lover's head,
And both her breasts exposed. She held the cell-phone steady,
And clicked it perfectly.

The next day, she would post the photos on the school's website.
That other teacher also added her one picture
To amplify his shame.
Such overwhelming evidence he knew he couldn't fight.
In mute humiliation, he heard every stricture
That would bury his name.

With heavy head, and heavier heart, his life wholly devoid
Of meaning or of purpose, he collected all
His things and left the school.
His reputation as a teacher crushed, still unemployed,
He muses ruefully his lustful rise and fall:
By a girl, made a fool.

Salome licks her lips, thinking of how she made this man
Into a nothing with an O-thing, and she smiles.
"If you want in my bed,"
She warns, "with my hypnotic, bold disrobing I still can
Make goats of gurus. O, with my womanly wiles,
I'll make you lose your head."