Bread and Circuses

the poems of R. Blade
Copyright © 1995 by R. Blade All Rights Reserved

Contents

Atomicus Rex        nuclear physics
Beach                   summertime reverie
Black Cawcus       crows in cawcus
Blues                   welfare looking for benefits
Charade               religious service for the dead
Demons               violators of common ethics
Emperors            male penguin brooders
Epistle                 religious rituals
Freak                   our Devonian ancestors
Granada               the song
Guitar                   country and rock 'n roll
Hummingbird        amazing bird
Magneto Man        our electrical bodies
Mauler                  wood splitter
Mein Fuhrer          adoration of Hitler
Merengitis             dancing the merengue
Messiah                 religious fanatics
Neapolitan Melodies     richly emotive ballads
Panamo                 in search of God
Pelvis                     rock and roll entertainer
Rap                       singsong inanity
Rome Again          America aping ancient Rome
Rosalie                  dancing to big bands
Rwanda                 genocide in Rwanda
Sarajevo                genocide in the Balkans
Single Mom           single women having babies
Spring                   winter storm in spring
Superbowl             racial imbalance in football
Swing                    dancing to big band music
Tragically Correct      lovers destroy each other
Trojan Horse          reckless drivers
Villa                       summers in Narragansett
Virtu                     virtual reality
Winter Moth         moth appearing in winter
XX/YY Eaters        flesh-eating bacteria

 

Atomicus Rex

1.

Paging on the rex matteral screen displays the
Happening of a single cosmic event in
Temper tantrums of symmetry violation
When matterals and their antis produced mutants
Becoming plus and minus and male and female
They mated in infinite saprosanct gauge fields
Nourished by elusive gravitons and photons
Their union in the true plasmic telemarriage
Did format the kingdom of Atomicus Rex.

Atomicus Rex saecula saeculorum
King of matterals, elements, and molecules
King of all bacteria and viral agents
And of your maker and its repro divisions
King of your control genes and traveling zygote
King of your fancied soul, your body, and your corpse
And of mind forays in your vast dendrite forest
King of laudens, sapiens, and other homos
King of you before, now, and forever shall be
And of your Gods, your religions, and rituals
King of planets, of far red shifts, and fossil glow
King of myths and magic and northern lights marvel
Welcome to the kingdom of Atomicus Rex.

2.

Paging NEXT on the rex matteral screen displays
The forum where Nobel laureate loud barkers
Recite slick renditions of redacted reports
Refrained by previews of putative peepshows they
Succor with midway magic their eager post docs
Corralling consumers to the path of big top
Whose narrow entrance signed by noble gases now
Proclaims in bold colors: Have Hope You Who Enter
Inside the occult court of Atomicus Rex
Sciential decree declares that laws of the realm
Be governed by the surviving triumvirate
Electrona, Protonicus, Neutronicus.

Electrona the massless minus matteral
Stable immaculate without quarks or gluons
She dwells in orbital shells of remote regions
Liberated from classic Bohring theory
La donna è mobile in her dual role
A solid corpus in a gossamer peignoir
Streaking in fast lanes around the far nucleus
Going out abandoning domestic chores for
The call of the charged free agent urging her to
Jump high or low in photo op flash dancing or
To go all the way with a strange new nucleus
Encouraged by strong lines of magnetic sweet talk
From her own nucleus she succumbs and takes off
Rappelling her wayward path down the rocky face
Migrating toward the hot nucleon environs
With teasing wave-bys she works the forbidden zone
Where massive Protonicus and Neutronicus
Cruise about picking up delinquent wise guy nymphs
Now desperate she vibrates her short string G but
Flash! the capture and she's gone! tau tau bambina.
Protonicus the massive plus matteral and
Neutronicus the massive neutral matteral
The quarky twins whose unequal ups and downs are
Strongly held tight by messy sticky-back gluons
Together they strive for a stable nucleus
But in some oppressive and densely packed centers
Unstable gang weaklings under pressure break down
Causing rumbles clashing inciting riots of
Hot radioactive elemental decay
The shattering disruption quickly controlled as
The quarky twins exchange their fungible mandates
And in the act of becoming do the required
Quick ejection of alpha or beta gang punks
In the ghetto big sweep gamma ray aftershocks
Soothe the nucleus leaving it calm and less dense.
For courtiers triumvirate values are shown
With their titles and precise scaler vital stats
In ID passes on their official dress code
Adorned with all their tested stately properties
Installed as electric charge, mass, and spin
With inscrutable triune power they govern
Their subject matterals real and/or virtual
Whose fickle masses and spins but steady charges
Measure the moments of their immortality.

3.

Paging NEXT on the rex matteral screen displays
The lab arcade of secret aisles with testing booths:
Looking into the mirror's dazzling mosaic
The left palm is reflected with thumb pointing right
The left back is also reflected with thumb right
Fronting upright the top is north and spins clockwise
Backing upright the top is south and spins counter.
In the shooting gallery marksmen with ray guns
The target a noded gold leaf with a pin hole
Marksman 1 shoots through the pin hole and rings the bell
Marksman 2 misses the pin hole and hits a node
Which shoots back at marksman 2 and rings the same bell
Then comes on-line a paper target with two slits
Marksman 1 shoots straight through slit 1 and rings bell 1
Marksman 2 shoots straight through slit 2 and rings bell 2
In synchrony marksman 1 shoots through slit 1 and
Marksman 2 through slit 2 but only one bell rings.

The hardware womb of liquid nascence exposes
Matteral memories as charged transient tracks
Bubble etchings whose colorful collisions are
Opaline ions popping in the mag pavan
Stripped of her charge she skirts about somersaulting
Becomes downright breaking her perfect symmetry
Revealing for the first time the now discovered
Secret of her magnificent south monopole.
Dangling from lab hooks a Feynman mobile fastened
With flying squares and two-sided triangles whose
Sines are desperately seeking their cosines and
Swinging trapezia, spinning triskelions
Colliding with matterals in poltergeist winds
The mobile spins ½ and its parallel lines
Turned upward are converging in far vertex space
One curving toward the other in daring foreplay
The tangent's profane kiss on its bare locus a
Formula violation of its asymtote
But in the mobile lines remain parallel as
Berserk bosons in loops go for infinity
Amid the bel screams of Euclidean bombast.

4.

Paging NEXT on the rex matteral screen displays
The compact Cygnus X plasma generator
The trembling hand that powers ON the slow start-up
Of sciential inquisition of what we are
Amber combs stroking fuzzy hair to giant starbursts
Hot blue sparks zapping between two polished steel balls
Two gases mixed but not shaken yield clear water
Liquid helium flows in teflon falls over
Skyscrapers leaning in parabolic profile
The pipe smoking bushy-haired classic intruder
Fireflies flashing expose praying mantis eating
In the passion of electromag ecstasy
The integration of our alpha-subalpha.
Then votive lamps of probability flicker
Probing our matteral knowledge of what is known
Ghosts of theories past materialize as
Hot shots reveal reserved virtual matterals
Shamelessly transecting themselves one to many
The abstract streakings of becomings and endings
Convoluted knots relaxing to string segments
And in the lab dance of the founding families
Gravitons and photons, hadrons and dorions
Kicking together with and without symmetry
Observing silently from a nearby alcove
Alice and Ariel aghast with open mouths.

5.

Paging LAST on the rex matteral screen shows those
With visions of Nobel prizes and cash awards
With cutthroat collegiate envy they compete
For the next generation TeV machine
Partying in virtual technical orgies
Circulating as in Brownian movement while
Sipping hot espresso spiked with Amaretto
nd gossip about neutrinos and neutrettos
ut what about the unobserved massive neutrone?
Here comes Incitatus piulling an empty cart
With the pulsared message: Quantum Quanta Quando?
In the great symposium of masked transvestites
Detector outputs suddenly go out of sync
The rolling tearing agony in the garden
The loss of raster and background radiation
Redeemed by the serene peace of a bright blank screen
Each pixel blazing with blue hot birthright in the
Nuclear nursery of Atomicus Rex
Whose nurturing might lead to our ultimate GUT.
(Atomicus Rex was prompted by nuclear physics.)

12Oct91

Beach

Its sapling buds sprouted when pilgrims fought Pequots
Now the grand white oak son of Charter Oak stands tall
Its twisted stout branches antlering up and out
Climbing zigzag towering to a rounded crown
Lush in full bloom with its deep lobed polished green leaves
There a gray squirrel housekeeps its soft rotted crotch
Surveilled from above by a complaining blue jay
Whose brazen surprise attack sends the gray squirrel
Scurrying down girthing round the oak's massive trunk.
Circling high above the crow scouting the old oak
Glides silently into its verdant bouffant crown
Its great yellow beak squawking stridently caw-caw
Calling the few adults and all the juveniles
From the diaspora they cawcus in congress
Caw-caw caw intensive stridency attracts more
Thousands now dot the Rorschach blot on tall white oak
It’s crowded canopy reflecting sunlit gangs
Shooting iridescent shards of green, blue, silver
Defoliating hunter green for black on black
To the shrill protest from the departing blue jay.
Empowered by their number and raucous cawing
They begin their wilding party in the oak room
At first boisterous then litigious now brawling
Rabble-rouses cross perching in coalitions
Others cawing harsh complaints criticize all those
Mother funkers hiding in densely packed perches
As preaches sermonize from high bully pulpits
Congregations shout in gospel call and response
Affirming their cawing rights with caw-caw caw-caw
Euphemizing the banal banter of street rap
Their planned new conversion of original guilt
To missions of singsong invective per stirpes
The deafening decibels from boom box output
Whose sonic psycho shock flexes the stressed white oak
In the chaos of this broadcast cacophony
A short silent cut and then longer silent cuts
The rowdy black cawcus subsides to Pax Corvus
A crow departs then another then more then all
Visible again are green leaves and gnarled branches
The gray squirrel scampers to its rotted crotch and
The blue jay returns to resume its surveillance.

(Black Cawcus was prompted by thousands of
crows cawcusing in my neighbor's white oak tree,
reminiscent of the Congressional Black Caucus.)

16May90

Blues

The blues are down-going to that negative place
That down place where deviled bodies bemoan their plight
In a downcast chorus of common denials
Where maintainers make their melancholy music
Harassed by the tired travails of a guitar
Sung in support groups in retreats of last resort
The blues beguile them with self pity evoking
Confessional babble and quick redemption for
Bluesiacs who blame their bosses for weekend busts
And throw their empty bottles on Gehenna Road.

Leave your genteel southern masters to their cotton
Free your feet from the deep sucking black delta muck
Forget your wailing renditions of the Job song
Go north, north to where the Messiah ministers
And happily delivers in the land of swing.

(Blues was prompted by its welfare themes looking for
benefits.)
15Sep90
 

Charade

   1.

And then the profligate neoplasm went forth
Its evil metaspreads defiling lymphatics
Wailing in cancer pain she cries out to the Lord
To come upon her with his biblical comfort
But the Lord remains safe in his tabernacle
For consolation she entreats the saving saints
Canonized they remain in their dark sepulchers
Even St. Jude of last resort remains aloof
She wails in cancer pain calling out to passing
Apostles but only smiling Judas draws near
At bedside consultation the doctors agree
Excising this malignant organ then that one
With Hail Mary incantation they concoct a
Potent chemocola but it dissolves her throat
Forsaken by all but her chart's terminal scroll
She records with body soils on throwaway sheets
The obscene odyssey of her gross affliction
With ravished throat and ruptured vocals oozing blood
With dead wet eyes begging for euthanasia
Madonna dolorosa with mute moaning prays
"Lord take this cancered body my last offering
Accept this lowly gift my living sacrifice".

2.

"May the grace of God our Father be with you all
Let us all begin in penitential silence
Let us confess all our sins to God our Father
Father we have sinned exceedingly have mercy
Jesus Christ and also Christ Jesus have mercy
Lord from the depths of our sins we cry out to you
Your Son died for our sins past, present, and future
For dying he destroyed the death of our sister
You raised your Son from the dead to give us our faith
That same faith you bestowed upon our lost sister".

"We gather in this sanctuary to honor
Her mortal body conveyed on this catafalque
Draped with the white baptismal pall covering not
Sweet Lebanon cedar or cypress lined with lead
But a loosely joined satin-lined pressboard coffin
Packaging the remains of her mortal body
With this holy water bless and cleanse her body
With this frankincense fragrance her mortal remains
With this paschal candle erect her watchtower".
"Lord while our sister lived on earth she was with you
In darkness you walked with her and protected her
You guided her to sunlit paths of your namesake
You made all sorrow and pain to pass over her
Your goodness and kindness followed her all her days
Your comfort and consolation they gave her peace
In this blessed ritual for departed souls
We offer our sister to you the Almighty
Lord we offer her upon your sacred altar
Accept her as you did the firstlings of Abel
Accept her as you did the son of Abraham
Accept her as bread and wine from Melchizedek
Merciful and just God accept her as our gift
We pray that you redeem her mortal body as
 As you redeemed Israel from her iniquities".

Lord in baptism she died to be raised by you
Lord they said your spirit in our sister's soul was
Amorphous and invisible but now we know
That through your inspiration new scripture reveals
Her soul to be your divine electro pattern
And as confirmed in infallible papal bull
Her soul lingered long after brainstem death to be
Recovered in synchrony with somatic death
Thereby performing the rite of holy passage
Departing at that time with the Holy Spirit
For transport above the mountain top to heaven".

3.

And now the priest bows low before the catafalque
The people sit and pray
Facing the altar the priest bows and prays aloud
Genuflecting in adoration grasps the host
Facing the people he shows them the one white host
The people stand and pray
Facing the altar the priest bows and prays aloud
Genuflecting in adoration grasps the cup
Facing the people shows them the cup's drop of wine
The people sit and pray
|Facing the altar the priest bows and prays aloud
Genuflecting in adoration he grasps the
Corporal and praying covers the host and cup
The people kneel and pray
And now server dexter crosses from right to left
And server sinister crosses from left to right
And in the vast desert's death silence the bells ring
Lord this humble Centurion is not worthy
The priest passes his hands over the corporal
"Blessed are the priestly hands making bread and wine"
And it comes to pass the corporal levitates
Behold! the multitude of consecrated hosts
The cup full to the brim with consecrated wine
The sacred mystery becomes manifest and
In its ghostly seiche the paschal candle flickers
In devotion the white baptismal pall flutters
Wafting St. Catherine's redemptive sweet odor
Facing the people with arms outstretched and palms up
St. Peter's surrogate beckons to those faithful
Confessed penitents for monstrance adoration
Communicants celebrating with bread and wine
With mastication consuming Christ's body and
Washing down his mangled body with blood red wine
In their blest euphoria they introvert to
Rendezvous in midbrain with their imagined God
The endorphin God who chose them as his people
The true God of their delusional self esteem
The Christ in chemico revealed as Almighty
Believers compounding reality from myth
In the organ's sonic quake walls reverberate
And the cantor sings of glory alleluia!
And then the choir sings the communion antiphon
And then the people sing and sway alleluia!

4.

"We live worldly lives until we drop to the ground
On the ground we die to produce eternal life
Having passed from her sinful and temporal life
The foolish and vain think that our sister is dead
But the faithful know that God blessed her immortal
For he proved her in his sacrificial furnace
In baptism he promised her eternal life
In life she believed in the mystery of faith
In death that faith mystery was revealed to her
The Lord will set her free and she will not decay
Almighty rescue our sister from mortal death
We know that the Redeemer lives come to her aid
Jesus Christ and Christ Jesus live come to her aid
As sentinels wait she waits for her redemption
Lord you raised Lazarus four days dead in his tomb
Lord be merciful be forgiving redeem her".
"We commend our sister into his waiting hands
Farewell dear sister this is your hour of glory
Go in peace to Abraham who will accept you
And lead you to him God our Father the Most High
May our Father in heaven draw you to his breast
May you walk in peace in his perpetual light
May his glorious countenance shine upon you
Lord with your arms outstretched reach out and embrace her
Receive her and wash her as in baptism and
Anoint her with your oil thereafter revealing
Your postmortem miracle of divine splicing
Joining together her raised mortal body and
Her soul waiting in heaven since somatic death
Your angelic genesis through holy fusion
Thereby bestowing upon her your own 3 R's
Redemption, resurrection, and recombinance".

"She is in heaven with the Lord God our Father
Where her worldly sacrifices are rewarded
Where choirs of angels sing the songs of paradise
Where grace and kindness and joy are with her always
Where she will never know misfortune or torment
Where she will never know the suffering in pain
She dwells with Jesus Christ and also Christ Jesus
With the Lamb of God she dwells as one of his flock
She dwells in security with God our Father
She dwells in heaven in beatitude with God
Forever and for life everlasting Amen".

(Charade was prompted by religious services for the dead.)

1Jan95

Demons

They approach smiling with friendly demeanor but
Close-up you see the white fangs that tear you apart
Close up they are the demons who devastate you
Selling drugs for birthing mounds of amorphia
Selling foods plumped up with deadly bacteria
Swarming they hover over mounds of feces
Damming rivers they divert water to rich farmers
If prolonged drought dry cracks farmer’s land they blame you for
Voting to approve the project and tax dollars
And when you’re dehydrated begging for water
They give you e coli overflowing in a
Cup molded by carcinogens and oil-trapped gas.

They promise you cheap safe nuclear power but
Deliver costly kilowatts condemning you
To 10,000 years of radioactive waste.
They are the cowardly reps and sly senators
Who vote for the Statue of Liberty's masses
Who embezzle your tax dollars to benefit
Their incumbency with its power and status
The ones patronizing illegal aliens
Who then demand their fair share of your tax dollars
While their pregnant women birth newborns on our soil
Increasing population, wasting resources.

They are arrogant LBJ’s who send our youth
To foreign lands to fight for corrupt governments
And respond to your protests with spinful PR
With a litany of lies approved just for you
Exhorting you to trust their bungled leadership
As they turn away from rows of body bags to
Patronize with smiles those with missing body parts
They promise veterans bonuses but instead
Send our tax dollars to aid foreign dictators.

Arise you confident liberated daughters!
Rush naked to the mall and demonstrate for the
Recall from exile of our sacrificial youth.
They are union members striking for more power
Greedy for more money blackmailing consumers
Like Hoffa threatening to withhold bread and milk
They are the ones who punch time clocks but do no work.
They are conpersons promising naïve seniors
Safe investments with double-digit returns plus
Full healthcare with home nursing but then they abscond
With the seniors' savings leaving them destitute.

They promise students a college education
For only $160,000 over four years
But they turn out to be high-priced custodians
Who sympathize with failures of communism.
He is the arrogant Japanese officer
Commanding the Bataan death march slaughtering our
Wounded soldiers and golden nurses of the west.
He is the upstanding West Point general who
Orders green teenage troops to assault a mountain
Fortified with enemy heavy artillery
Obeying orders they roll down as body parts.

He is the rogue cop stealing, raping, and killing
The Detroit hit man following an easy mark
The young dropout stealing, rioting, and shooting
The berserk DWI Serb driving a large tank.
He is the bribed watchman who looks the other way
The self-abusing addict preying as wild beast
The angry unloved control freak, the one raping.
She is the sly one carrying her secret box
She rejects him as a sexual harasser
Then smiling she beckons him to come have a look
And when she opens up her fagged Pandora's box
Out comes deception, financial debts, and VD.

She is the mother abandoning her children
Serving as the high whore of a brutal drug lord
She is the young seductive agent provocateur
Horny males fight over her sexual display
And when one kills the other she simply walks on.
She is the woman sharing crack with her fetus
She is the mother who dumpsters her warm newborn
The slothful doper raising the spiteful mean child
She is the sorceress breaking into your head.

(Demons was prompted by violators of common
ethics.)

12Jun94

Emperors

   Freak

From the cathedral's atrium through its high nave
The great captain walks on his bare knees over strewn
Marble shards from minarets destroyed in battle
Stopping and praying at each station of the cross
Leaving a trail of blood in the aisle of penance
At the altar icon of his crucified God
Marble sharps impaling his mangled knees inscribe
Dermoglyphs recording the bloody offerings
Of his willful travail and suffixed suffering
Looking up praying to God he begs for a sign
Then flickering votive candles devote smoke wisps
Ascending to the vaulted ceiling of the apse
There in its dome God holds a globe topped by a cross
In his hand the globe turns crossing the Atlantic
To the land of the coming city Veracruz
From there is heard an inspiring new melody
In sacramental rituals with sweet incense
Appeared Gabriel with his trumpeters and then
Angels sing the Sanctus antiphon refrain to
Celebrate the new and inspiring melody
Then appeared the Paraclete forging trinity
Ballad and melody and song in Granada
Redeemed from uncertainty the great captain weeps
"Thank you Lord this humble servant thanks his Savior"
Making the sign of the cross rising and turning
He shuffles to the font hobbling on wounded knees
Sprinkling them with hyssop dripping holy water
Each blessing a downbeat for the song Granada.

From the city Veracruz the gulfstream carries
The inspiring melody to the shores of Spain
Where at dawn and fully armored the great captain
Mounted on his caparisoned white horse sees the
Tide and hears its scoring of the song Granada
And in that epiphany praises the Lord God
And makes the confirmation of his destiny
And gazes upon all the mustered armies of
Souls of perpetual faith soon to depart from
This world and converted Moors Christians for a day
The assembled armies now ready at high tide
Rally in singing the battle hymn Granada
Granada its gardens with fountains and myrtle
And stately pavilions whose filigree veils the
Pleasures hidden from the Sierra Nevada
Raising his left hand holding the champion's sword
The mighty sword of the church over infidels
Raising his right hand bearing the cross Veracruz
He shouts the command for the march on Alhambra.

(Granada was inspired by the song Granada.)

22Oct94

Guitar

From its hidden rhythm chair the lowly guitar
Its frail acoustics barely audible from a
Strung out resonant box aping the dulcet lyre
Now comes out full view spotting itself center stage
Its bulky body streamlined with new composites
Its thin voice enraged by hi-tech electronics
The converted born again guitar now plays as
he major rhythm lead and solo sound of the
Amplified metallic twang of country and rock.
Country music plays its plucking guitars with blue
Maudlin chords of adultery and drunkenness
Routinely mixed well with dischords of deception
Revered by composers and listeners alike
Stereotypes cheated only by chance blunders
Sung by wailing despondent voices of plaintiff
Criers proclaiming their personal sob stories
Accompanied by moaners playing their noses.
And then there are Jesus chords played at revivals
Where lustful TV evangelists flourish by
Shedding tears of sinful biblical remorse as
They hard sell salvation to extort donations
And from the Sheik's Epistle to Concubines they
Read salacious psalms to choirgirls in the front row
Then during the night sneak into their open tents.
With plucking electric guitars rock beats hard and
Executes music with jolts of amplified chords
Thundering over camouflaged melodies whose
Drop press percussive beats on distended skin heads
Mimic the sonic booms of Normandy beachheads.
There on the stage spotlighted for public worship
Androgynous rock punks use bellicose fretting
Yelling musical lies to tone deaf spectators
Voicing their piercing screams and Yukon howling with
Falsettos covering for raucous hog calling
They pose as singers whose tonal range compliments
Midnight caterwauling and rasping raccoon calls
And vultures feeding on scraps of dead melodies
Singing's vocal glory punked by guttural grunts
The contretemps of their tail stubs wagging vocals.
On the scened and strobed stage of hyped gaudery they
Do windup toy dancing and lustful posturing
Handing their gender manifestos for voyeurs
Pimping self exposure for media moguls
Prancing to rock tempos with quick voltaic jerks
The last traumatized twitches before their stage death
Measure for measure petrified by bars of rock
Mean music powered by ignoble preamp gates
Silences the Concorde and even Meniere's ring
Making the harsh protesting bel the king of rock.
And now to the coda allegro assai
In the great expanse of Gobi desolation
Drill a wide slant hole to that deep place in Sheol
Throw in electric guitars and country and rock
Fill with nuclear waste and gooey plastic sludge
Quickly cover with another Mt. Everest.

(Guitar was prompted by entertainers of country music
 and rock 'n roll music.)

14Mar92

Hummingbird

1.

When tender pink flowers blush at summer whispers
When open bells of scarlet trumpet creepers call
Promising sweets, a cruising hummingbird responds
Hovering over a blossom and with its long
Sword beak penetrates the blossom's tubal passage
Trilling in the deep throat with its turgid forked tongue
Probing the viscid bottom lapping nectar then
Grazes among the morning glory and lilac
Coral bells, bleeding heart, jewelweed, scarlet sage
And with its reach beak picks off insects 1 2 3
The fastest living highest energy burner
Constantly feeding renewing its energy
Thirsting from sweets and fast foods it finds water and
Boldly asserts its riparian rights as it
Patrols its feeding grounds with kamikaze dives
At intruding birds, cats and dogs, and even you.
Its mini body splattered with glossy colors
Its breastplate struck with family Trochilidae
The 3 inch 3 ounce feather thing flies forward and
Backward and rightside up, upside down, sideways and
Even flies standing still hovering in midair
Sikorsky seeing its astounding flights took notes.

2.

Lion hearted and ferocious in battle the
Rival courting males compete for her attention
Attacking each other in aerial combat
Jousting with their long pointed lance beaks trying to
Pierce rival's eyes viewing her staid serene beauty
Perched protected in her convent perfumed bower
Then seeing the blinded rival fall in battle
She waits patiently for her showoff combat ace
Celebrating his victory for mating rights
With a dazzling display of aerial fireworks
The nonoscine genius of flight acrobatics
Skywrites his intentions with ribald proposals
Then approaching with wings outstretched and hovering
Brazenly exposes to her his frontal view
His brilliant crimson crown and royal blue gorget
His lustful red glare and fluffy white pantaloons
Buff underparts maculated with amethyst
Still hovering he pirouettes on his fantail
Showing his back camouflaged with shimmering shards
Emerging from ancient capricious color cells
Photons refracting in peaks of melanin plates
Expanding chromatic waves to slick emulsions
Green iridescence merged with lazuline luster
From turquoise to aquamarine to beryline
Assuming a new angle pirouettes again
Displaying his rufous throat encrusted with gems
Rubies and emeralds and tiger's eyes stalking
Unable to resist she submits, her head filled
With mating fantasies and visions of fledglings
She abandons her passive perch and hovering
Spreads her tail feathers revealing under coverts
In the grand ballroom of their sunlit courting field
Two hovering holograms strobed by disco spots
Dance the routines of prenuptial intimacies
Atomic agitation getting hot hotter
Now torrid by the minute and by the numbers
Heartbeats pumping from 500 to 1200
Breathing from 250 panting at 300
Temp from 90º to 120º
Look!
Cavorting in midair with their mating urges
Now coupling sexing with their swollen cloacas.
But over there under the forest canopy
Are hidden the hummingbird houses of orgies
Where males display their flying feats and colorworks
Where songless male choruses chirp for loose females
Whose drab bodies dabbed with muted color blushes
Are now inflated with hormone highs for group sex
Craving birthrights, shamelessly soliciting for
Multiple males they expose buff colored full breasts
Males and females mixing it up sexing it up
Under greenleaf covers all the neighbors sexing
Scrambling their species in quickie trysts with strangers
For virtual gang banging in lek bordellos.

3.

Burning high octane fuel in the inside lane
Its high rev super performing mini engine
Now seized with exhaustion the hummingbird eyes the
Sky's drooping red blossom and finds its evening perch
Squatting and fluffing its feathers and relaxing
Slowing down by the minute and by the numbers
Heartbeats from 500 blipping at 35
Breathing from 250 barely at 140
Temperature 90 falling to 65
Going down to dropout dormancy to torpor
The controlled coma of pseudo hibernation
All through the night barely alive mimicking death
Will it die sleeping euthanized by exhaustion?
As the horizon dawn begins whiting out night
Will it wake in time to see the next sunrise?
With its stored energy waning can it rally?
Mustering all its meager leftover power
It struggles to wake to reenergize itself
In the great synergy of mind for will power
For the glory of conscious self resurrection
It slowly forces open its opaque eyelids
Shocking itself awake and rising it ascends
With fragile wingtips grasping morning light rings and
Facing the glowing sun performs the iron cross
Hovering in celebration of a new day
Another day for feeding, fighting, and mating
Getting going by the minute by the numbers
Pumped up by strong heartbeats rising to 500
Lungs inflated flexing breathing at 250
Temperature climbing to 90º it
Begins cruises lapping up quick energy sweets.

4.

Warned by cool northern nights and instincts to migrate
The ruby-throated hummingbird cruises about
Feasting on nectar and doles of backyard glucose
Scavenging helpless insects trapped in spiders' webs
Tailing sapsuckers to lap their succulent holes
Pigging out building up energy reserves then
Starts its arduous solo flight from New England
Down along the east coast flyway to the warm south
Stopping to rest and refuel on the gulf coast
And then one day with the sunrise at its back it
Departs on the last leg of its long nonstop flight
500 miles across the Gulf of Mexico
Alone without a leader or great flying wedge
It flies solo towards its winter feeding grounds
Flying on and on and gliding in the updrafts
On and on and spotting a fallen hummingbird
Circling and diving in flight encomium for
The downed flier now floating on white cap markers
On and on passing another fearless loner
The stenciled ensign of the monarch butterfly
On and on almost at its marathon stone wall
It rallies to the applause of warm tidal waves
As it approaches the green landfall leading to
The promised land of Aztec warmth and white water
Of lush nectarine delights and swarming insects.

(Hummingbird was inspired by its amazing flights and habits.)

15Oct94

Magneto Man

1.

In the land of angels and scriptured miracles
The lizard's darting tongue codes the ancient tale of
Ascetic mendicants in circuit pilgrimage
Their penitent plodding strung out in single file
Through barren abandoned land without horizon
Under the high fusion sun rocks cast domed shadows
And dry out and crack exposing demons buried
As faithless followers with infested visions.
At their destination the chosen sacred place
All the lookers are assembled in a circle
Standing and waiting shrouded with expectation
Reciting respected welcomes they give way to
The mystics, dancing dervishes and musicians
They begin to the slow tempo of quiet prayer
Dervishes move in limbering dream lethargy
Arms undulating with the conjured ocean flows
Abstract black eyes pointing at and piercing lookers
Music and dance now in fluent antiphony
Unite in merciful submissive ritual
Dervishes start whirling moving counterclockwise
Subtly the music becomes faster and louder
Dervishes whirl in their eccentric self orbits
For the inspired synergy of music and dance
Gabriel conducts with animated tempo
Dervishes whirling faster faster arms flailing
Funneling dark bodies in tornadic fury
Pipes shrieking, cymbals sky splitting, drums discharging
In the fanatic crescendo jumping midair
And levitating with their open mouths moaning
Now in the ecstasy of their self-induced trance
They see houris beckoning them to cross over
To transcend this world for a virtual heaven
One of them submitting falls howling to the ground
Then one by one they fall to the ground of heaven
The music stops but one dervish is still whirling.

2.

Magneto man is still dancing whirling whirling
His gaunt bare torso sweating lustering like silk
Suddenly he stops and pivots on his right foot
Extending his right hand palm up tracks the high sun
Receives the sun in his palm parabola and
Moves the spot along his lifeline into himself
Now deep in his trance he confronts the temptation
Whether to leave earth for the journey to heaven
To the kingdom of penumbral perfumed gardens
There white-skin houris with black hair and sea-green eyes
Pour cool wine and model their heavenly assets
And strum sitars gently fingering long hard necks
And freely cavort unveiled among the jasmine
And in ghostly peignoirs laced with Eve's obsession
Coyly beckon him to approach to cross over
To cross the hot synapses of his ecstasy
To moan and fall howling to the ground of heaven
But Magneto man knows the houris are man made
That their seductive ion-pregnant bodies are
Disguised plus and minus skirting this way and that
Shamelessly changing their naked DC currents.

Magneto man yoked with sync in his holoself
In the core of himself his singularity
Lowers his outstretched right arm and at that moment
A mystic approaches carrying a pillow
Silk embroidered with multicolored Hatha man
Offering a sliver spike encircled by beads
Now Magneto man grasps the glinting silver spike
And pulling a fold of his gaunt flat belly flesh
And tilting his head facing the sun with closed eyes
He wills his plus go minus, his minus go plus
He wills his left-facing bacteria face right

Wills that quarks of mind fire neurons in neat chaos
That excited they charm analgesics get high
In the magnetic eye of his electric storm
He makes the wave burst pattern that is his image
Then holding the silver spike glinting in the sun
Quickly plunges it into his drawn belly flesh
In the gaping wide mouths of infidel lookers
In those transduced flesh receivers there resonates
Silent echoes of violent collisions and
In the pressured shock wind of their collective gasp
They see not a drop of blood nor grimace of pain
They stand entombed with large Egyptian eyes gazing.

3.

In the presence of those believers and skeptics
Magneto man retracts the bloodless silver spike
Revealing to them the prophetic stigmata
And with his porcelain glazed black eyes concentrate
Aligns his laser stare with his belly's twin wounds
Cauterizing with mind the two weeping hollows
Shorting out their regional high meridians
Calling forth the emollient from its healing spring
The clear primeval exudate now percolates
Seeping from the torn flesh and shredded nerve fibers
Tears of injury welling up overflowing
Surround the wounds with sinuous tributaries
In those wandering zigzag streams are camouflaged
The profile of Spallanzani's salamander
Struggling in the shallow eddying wound currents
Regenerating there its blastemized half leg.
Fully awake in a deep trance of delta waves
He now selects from his Schwann catalog of cells
Stereotype primitives that know how to grow
Slowly the cauterized wounds begin closing up
Embraced by a strong magnetic field the lookers
Witness the one with his high-tech belly callus
Magneto man the biofeedback specialist
The electroid switching in his particle world
The mystic adult as pedomorph self healer.

(Magneto Man was inspired by our electrical bodies.)

5Aug92

Mauler

With his 12 pound maul and his wood sled carryall
Stepping in frozen hollows made by winter boots
He follows the packed snow path to the felled red oak
Dismembered by a hungry chain saw's growling cuts
Its once stalwart trunk now disjointed vertebrae
Aligned gently curving depressed in crusted snow
Dislodging a piece he carries and offers it
On the splitting stump altar rooted in the ground
And with a single power swing splits asunder
The frozen length of red oak whose heartwood houses
The safe world of simple lives stiff in crystal sleep
Blasted awake by winter sun’s blinding snowlight
They fall by the thousands peppering the white crust
Their lives zapped by sunlight's short wave radiation.
Again and again the mauler's atomic blast
Splits the frozen red oak halves into quarters and
Again they fall by the thousands as others did
But some escaping the plague of sunlight and air
Scurry among the split wood and wood chips and ice
Into the rubble of their destroyed safe shelters
Where they regroup and recover and wait for May
When they will crawl out from their corpse-lined
      catacombs
Into the buried duff resurrected by spring.

(Mauler was prompted by splitting wood.)

24Jan93

Mein Fuhrer

Deliver us from depression and starvation
Deliver us from the gnawing shame of Versailles
In our great struggle give our men work with honor
Give us a real dollar worth more than a penny
Then you will see your German women give birth and
Suckle the true sons of your pure Aryan stock
Warrior heros who will reclaim our renown
Restoring the jubilant victorious cries
Of our ancestors who sacked that great power Rome
Of our great hero Bismarck and our Fredericks
For our brave sons whose conquests will reclaim Deutschland
They will reclaim Europe and even the whole world
Tell us the world is ours mein Fuhrer ours alone
Let me hear again your thrilling threatening voice
Tell us once more that we are the chosen ones
That we are the ones chosen above all others
When you pass by look my way and draw near to me
So that I may grasp your hand so strong mein Fuhrer
Come upon me and see the glory you have wrought
The Lord has sent forth his Paraclete to lead us
Not from Assisi but to our destined Third Reich
Mein Fuhrer we women adore and anoint you
And canonize you saint and savior of Deutschland.

(Mein Fuhrer was inspired by Nazi women's adoration of Hitler.)

1Aug93

Merengitis

Their machetes beat out Caribbean rhythms
Whose throbbing visceral cadence calls them to the
Dance floor where they perform the magic rituals
Responding to percussive messages coded
In recitations of raptured dance phrases from
Alluring tropical ballads in which singing
Sticks flagellate saxes whose blatant staccato
Wailing is consoled by soothing muted trumpets
As dancers exhibit their blissful embraces
In routines of stammering steps and limping drags
Refrained by turns and whirls and such smiles that even
Lifeless workers in dull murals step out to dance
Reviving the reprieve of their destined fadeout.
In the dance night burning with merengue fever
Sweating giddy in delirium vobiscum
The saintly burning coals misericordia
Tengo una amiga muy afectuosa
Corazón oo-oo ah-ah salsa picante
She trembles in her sea island cotton white smock
The aura of her wet incense smokes its fragrance
Candle hot tongues give her licks as she dances by
Cow bells toll her divine gestic beatitude
Her stigmata exposed in dark confessional
An altar dressed with maniple, blood wine, and pins
Dried herbs in pots falling apart going là-bas
Two angels wearing white and black satanic masks
Headless rooster barnyard trucking in crop circles
Corazón Santo Domingo si Yanqui no!

(Merengitis was inspired by the merengue.)

4Feb92

Messiah

Pelvis

In concert alive and in person center stage
The ribald purveyor of banging rock 'n roll
The bible-quoting guitar-strumming troubadour
Dressed in ritual white vestments and flowing cape
Adorned with rhinestones and sequins whose reflections
Under kliegs reanimate the shinning star
As front-loaded mannequin in wooing white suit
Albino satyr product embodied full size
Exhorts his adorers with sotto voce and
Erotic faxes contrived with stroking intros
Then with uppers hyper energy belts out rock
Backed by the showtime pelvic perturbations of
The swivel-hipped fancy-stepping surrogate stud
Whose visuals whisper pickup lines inflaming
Young women now begging for furtive telepets
Swooning in avowal of their hormonal highs
Coyly soliciting for tender date rape love.

But now the singing stroking dynamo falters
Forgetting lyrics, missing strums, he's going down
All those time-release downers making him lowdown
Down alone with guitar uncoupled from pelvis
The redeemer of sexual repression and
Precursor of TV evangelist con men
Is kneeling center stage under kliegs head drooping
Down with impotent pelvis their party vicar
Is moaning and mumbling and now confessing the
Long medley of all his maculate excesses as
His handler rush out calling for intermission
Carrying off stage their faulty pelvic product
Crying and begging for its own demise it is
Kept alive and revived with multiple uppers
Reworked by expert seconds and recostumed they
Push to center stage the ghost now realized for
Rolling cameras and consuming screaming fans
Waiting to be turned on again by the Pelvis.

(Pelvis was prompted by rock 'n roll entertainers
displaying their atonal voices and meager talents with
flagrant sexual displays and gaudy costumes.)

7Jul91

Rap

With angry young faces and silverback flat tops
With gold earrings and gold neck chains and bare torsos
Posturing in their best dropout demeanor they
Appear with all their baggage and accessories
Hucksters delivering their nasty dis wares while
Grunting grotesque sound bytes of tanto claptrap and
Mimicking singers they voice racist phrases and
Flap mechanical lips chimping on John Doe and
With rebellion sally in pseudo English the
Affirmative lip-synching soul-sucking con jobs
Selling delusions of updated slavery
And with all their project rage jitters proclaim the
Preferred vulgarities of their noir subculture
Sequestering themselves with gestured ghetto sounds
In monotonous atonal mutterings of
Their fatigued singsongs of mean street aphorisms
To the cadenced beats of Roman galley drummers
What was the drip drip of Chinese water torture
Is now the yak yak of rap with bongo background.

(Rap was prompted by its singsong inanity.)

23Jun92

Rome Again

1. Exordium

Americans, friends, immigrants too, come closer
Your founders' heartfelt pleas for human rights conjoined
With fond memories of my Roman Republic
And the simple logic of Caesar's bold reforms
Were propitious omens I could not contravene
Their confluence the case of maximum appeal
For this favored recall from my immortal niche.
My disparate parts having been polled and confirmed
You see me reassembled with my tongue intact
Resurrected for this momentous occasion
Reconstituted with my zeal for public good
And all my stubborn ardor for civil order
Do appear here today rightfully disposed to
Address you in your time of diminished worth to
Expose to your populous jury defects in
Your faltering republic by correlating
Aspects of ancient Rome and new America.
I speak to you not in my beloved Latin
But in your language from province Brittania
It is I Cicero counsel for common cause
Privileged to plead before the general public
I do not publish my words for posterity
Even though there may be scriba among you
But deliver them from this rostrum directly
To you assembled before me in this forum.

2. Founding

In auguries Jove destined Rome for greatest glory
Bestowing triumphant will on Rome incarnate
Glory to the she-wolf Rome's surrogate mother
With disciplined pride Rome made destiny duty
Glory to golden Rome earthly retreat of gods.
Rome propagated its thing in Res Romana
Res Romana became our Roman Republic
Whose common good was in tripartite oversight
With its consuls, senators, and peoples' tribunes.
In visions God revealed a free America
Divorced from Rome it retained its legacy of
Disciplined destiny to covenant with him
Rigorous missions of virtuous duty with
His will incarnate in New England wilderness.
America propagated its freedom thing
Your Declaration and Constitution became
Your republic with its tricameral balance
Executive, peoples' congress, and Supreme Court
Your republic copies our Roman Republic.
 

3. Triumphal Processions

Rome the grandeur of its triumphal processions
There in his god chariot the triumphator
Adorned with the insignia of victory
Laurel crown, purple tunic, gold-laced toga, and
Ivory scepter with Jove's gold eagle finial
Convoyed by his survivor battle-tough legions
Parading with all their spectacular loot and
Prodding along the shackled enemies amid
The warfall of wealth beyond the abacus in
Wagons heaped with gems, gold, silver, ivory, and
Spoils from the peoples who dared the power of Rome
The bulk tributes paid by the defeated nations
Their precious crafted culture displayed for Romans
Who shared that booty as more bonuses and doles
Parading senators smiled at Rome's great new wealth
Rich Rome got richer compounding wealth with more wealth
But bankers wept over impending inflation
On parade all the wonders of foreign travel
Pass before exultant mobs whose yells unscroll the
Panorama of destined triumph after triumph
Lictors with fasces cleared the path to Jove's temple
There the tiumphator declaimed the binding prayers
Offering to Jove the sacrificial white bull
And placing in Jove's lap the sacred laurel branch.
Here comes your smiling president's grand motorcade
Snaking around the Circus Maximus beltway
Exiting at the Potomac taking the route
Past the Washington Monument turning onto
The broad Sacred Way up the Capitoline Hill
There's the president's black bulletproof limousine
On its door your great seal with Rome's golden eagle
Its raised wings outstretched symbolic of Rome's power
Its talons grasping an olive branch and arrows
Your substitutes for Rome's laurel branch and fasces
Its fendered flags striped in Roman proscription red
On pure white intent fielded in British woad blue
Protected by Proletarian Guard washouts
Jogging jesters whose secret is they cannot see
Stalking your president are big black shiny cars
Filled with spoils of elections and big dealmakers
The vanquished party's living tribute to congress
Driving past white marble Romanesque buildings the
Motorcade stops for destined sacrifices at
Your White House of political offers and takes.

4. Atrium

In Rome in the sun-bathed atrium of his house
The consul seated in his stately curule chair
Smiles and nods greetings to clients as they jostle
For recognition by his nomenclator who
Announces their names and titles then presents them
The provincial governor who amassed great wealth
Extorting high taxes and much tribute from the
Defeated people of Rome's new foreign province
Gives the consul a precious gift towards a new term.
Businessmen giving pouches of gold are rewarded
With lucrative government building contracts or
With import/export licenses for pillaging
Defeated nations using their own people to
Exploit their own resources for Rome's benefit.
Land speculators who bought out small farms assigned
To war veterans and to homeless peasants now
Deed the consul a prestigious city mansion
Or sumptuous seaside villa for summer retreats.
The once rural ethical politician now
Corrupted by Rome's power and machinations
Recites the consul's great achievements with such skill
And imbedded flattery it persuades all there
To proclaim in unison that the senate must
Vote to build a temple honoring that consul.

5. Rose Garden

On the forecast bright day and at the scheduled hour
He enters center the spotlit Rose Garden set
Strolls past the hype-crafted telamoned colonnade
Those retinue uprights supporting him as the
PR president acting as leader and the
Realized perception of his caricature
Speaking from his heart of paste-ups he demurely
Abdicates integrity for the nation's good
As cameras with corrected lenses focus
On his political smile for the people then
On cue the approved audience applauds wildly
Commemorating the incompetence of all
Those well-rounded college educated bimbos
Who downed your nation from creditor to debtor
Repeating the anguish of Rome's fiscal problems.
Standing with halo surround on the podium
With rehearsed humility he disarms skeptics
Now the nomenclator approaches and whispers
The president's smile becomes a boyish grin the
Deception in sophisticated innocence
Then turning he waves to lobbyists and PACsters

Whose special interests ape covert anarchy
Whose greedy cabals peculate credit for debt
Whose solicitations debauch vestal virgins
Guarding the mortgaged homes of working citizens
Attending the ceremonies of their own wakes.
Once more the nomenclator draws close and whispers
Your summer president turns to the Black Caucus
Giving his affirmative promissory nod
Approving the racism muting memories
Of founders Adams, Jefferson, and Madison
The civil leaders who guided your republic
Debarring them from a national holiday
Adopting instead the king of protest marches
The powerful minister of voting who makes
Servile politics march with moral cowardice
That in your decline doles out welfare holidays
While in Lafayette Park is heard the peoples' cry
"Give us the Founders' Holiday or give us none".
In the tall grass the pride of lions still hungry
Stalks its prey, attacks, the snarling feeding frenzy
In the bones dispersed the tribal diviner reads
The prophecy of political correctness
The now program of subversive verbal deceit
That denies you first your speech, then money, then land
Washington scoundrels trying to ape Augustus.

6. Capitol

In Rome it was expensive to run for office
Candidates bought votes with doles of money and grain
And sold their trust for bribes then sacrificed to gods
Your candidates exercise corruptive rights with
Venial sins of sex, perks, and padded expenses
Then disgorge in your TV vomitorium
In America as in Rome candidati
Are not clothed in the immaculate white toga.
In this your era of decline foolish voters
Elect as president and commander-in-chief
A slick draft-dodging con man with suit and haircut
Who with perceived amnesty on Memorial Day
Displays the solemn face of contrite demeanor
With funereal pose and wreathe in hand begins
With tentative steps his penitent procession
Prostrate at the altar begs for absolution
By placing the wreathe on the Unknown Soldier's grave
The once living patriot he mocked and renounced
The fallen patriot whose death he now honors
The ultimate sad spin of his hypocrisy
Taps call for mourners grieving with restrained contempt.
Bearing the Roman scepter he enters followed
By the speaker of political duopoly
Today your congress convenes with its dealmakers
Whose subversions are recorded as rhetoric
Adorning their egos and party positions
In sessions imputing verity to fiction
Whose voice votes promote hidden perks and franking rites
Whose yeas unite for equal dips in pork barrels
Whose proposed bills pander to fawning amendments
Whose mock debates pass prepaid legislation for
Reconciling laws with civil conspiracies
Justifying anarchy with volumes of laws
All this and big pensions too paid by taxpayers.
In Rome rich patrician senators insisted
That party censors purge unworthy members then
Demanded and received political favors
Today you are doing the same in your congress.
Your leaders do not understand what the words mean
They pass new laws just to interpret the old laws
To reduce your national debt they increase it
To collect less tax revenue they collect more
Your equal protection means discrimination
Free speech does not mean it is also free arson
Separating state from church does not mean congress
May hire preachers to lead it in religious prayers
As a debtor nation you call your debts assets
You value bad coins and stamps higher than good ones
I tell you this candidly without fear of your
Legal torts and suits because you are the jury
I could go on at length but I have only hours
Your leaders need my beloved Latin language.

My hearers even though I fear my tongue might be
Severed again I am now compelled to suggest
That your congressional gridlock can be quickly
Dispersed by a decisive and fearless leader
Where is your bold leader, your Caesar for a day?

     7. Foreign Diplomacy

Twice your armed might saved Europe from self destruction
Yet your diplomats fawn before Europeans
Responding with the aplomb of Tourette's syndrome
Yielding your advantage to balance their blunders
Executing your superpower as weakness
Feigning strength in approvals from feeble allies
Roman legates went abroad with power in hand.
Your foreign ambassadors full of protocol
Convert with missionary zeal narrow footpaths
To portage routes for tons of your domestic goods
And millions of your dollars to foreign lands whose
Dictators learned to say the word "democracy"
Who then seize your aid for their own black markets and
Deposit your millions in their private accounts
Build opulent mansions for extra concubines
Frolic in the perfumed waters in marble pools
And feast on exotic foods spiced with love portions
while their starving subjects scrounge for roots and water
While dissidents are slaughtered with your new weapons
While your ambassadors are stroked at parties then
On TV they report infamy as progress.

In the east radiation from the rising sun
Easily penetrates your unprotected shores
Eating at your core, ingesting it bit by bit
Is the fungus genus econophagia
As superhost you only protest while clever
Hiro with a low bow and contemptuous smile
Respectfully uses your own money to buy
Your land, your jobs, your landmarks, and tactfully you.
In war Rome demanded tribute from the vanquished
In peace Rome expanded its vast global commerce
In war you pay tribute to nations you vanquished
In peace those nations plunder your open markets
While protecting their markets with cultural walls.
When your Gulf War enemy was kissed by a king
You rewarded that king with more of your foreign aid
Again weakness posturing as superpower
Rome would have sent its legions to punish that king
To protect its interests in provinces Rome
Built army bases and naval stations abroad
You too have built the same in many foreign lands
As fungible merchandise of senate trading
Rome's enemies one day were its allies next day
You too have traded in Asia and in Europe.

8. Immigrants

Roman natives inhabited Latium hills
Intruding Etruscans claimed they were natives then
Freed white slaves and immigrants claimed they were natives
Rome the open city, swollen with foreigners
Asylum for queens and tourists and refugees
Rome even had a Stranger's Court to deal with them
Rome its republic and doles, the immigrant's dream
Roman citizenship was so highly prized that
Caesar himself granted it to some foreigners.

Today your senile congress is still welcoming
As immigrants the world's poor and wretched refuse
Incursive hordes of wild migratory lemmings
Invading your shores, violating your borders
Mobs of guileful illegals who despise you and
Impact your land with their swelling population
Who use your birthrights to usurp your benefits
Who openly mock you and renounce your language
Who resent and dishonor Memorial Day
Who with civil rights impose their culture on yours
But demand your freedom, Medicaid, and welfare
And your liberal doles give them freebie pensions.

In the paradigm of political retreat
Some hear the muezzin call to terrorism
They use due process to implement anarchy
There is as much madness here as there was in Rome.
And then there are your real American natives
Whose blood ancestors emigrated from Asia
Whose natural spirits still haunt and want your land
They own huge tracts of land they call nations and their
Western brothers own nations larger than some states
They rebuke your culture but dance for your welfare
They pay no taxes but demand your tax dollars
As entrepreneurs they claim they own your towns and
Want them back for casino gambling's big payoff.

9. Idlers

The idle converged on Rome for its high lifestyle
Idle war veterans, farmers, and foreigners
Rome was swollen with idlers, jobless and unskilled
They clamored for free housing, free rent, and free grain
Most idlers were housed in high-rise wooden hovels
Whose cubicles reeked of garbage and body wastes
Where the proletariat begot more bastards
Where the frustrated set their cubicles on fire
Then homeless they demanded free new housing and
Lining up in crowded streets fought over free grain
Unschooled they complained in barbaric Latin tongues
Clamoring for doles of more money and more grain
When satisfied they clamored for more spectacles
By magic idlers found money to bet on sports.
Today your idlers whether legal/illegal
Migrate to your big cities for big welfare checks
Relocating to new high-rise public projects
Where graffiti, murder, and violence transform
Steel and concrete to decrepit elevations
Where tokens of nomadic/tribal sorceries
Cast evil spells on new subsidized housing and
Once more altruists lose to spiteful dependents
Those idle captives of TV soaps and talk shows
Whose swollen teen bellies incubate more idlers
Their exponents multiplying without limits
Their bastards begging for surrogate parenting
Their expanding census taxing your resources
Their dropouts speaking in slothful street phonics of
Ghetto English whose offensive dialect is
Loudly expressed with assault weapons and handguns
My hearers your language is convenient and free
No dole, duplicate form, or welfare is required
Listen to it, repeat it again, speak it, and
Learn it to acquire the language of a job.

10. Debt

Rome was besieged by doles for its many idle
Rome built high its colossus of serial debts
Our generals conquered more land for more tribute
But Rome paid more bonuses and doles for more debt
Old liberal senators voted for more wars
To exact more tribute for dispensing more doles
Outraged moderates voted sumptuary laws
The people clamored for financial amnesty
But corrupt bankers continued their usury
They rebuilt burned housing for exorbitant rents
Bought bad land and sold it as prime land for villas
Romans cried out for justice but got only debt
Your corrupt bankers did the same in S & L's.
Rome promised veterans bonuses and small farms
Neglected veterans complained to our senate
Your neglected veterans complain to your VA
But your VA complains that it has no money.
In Rome land bankers bought out small farmers in debt
Establishing huge estates for large-scale farming
By groups of strong white slaves from defeated nations
Today your land bankers are doing the same for
Large co-op farmers getting richer on their poor
Migrant workers and free water from taxpayers.
Today your social programs pile debt upon debt
Your tax dollars squandered at the discretion of
Politicians needing power more than country
Deranged financial wastrels whose doles create here
As in Rome a populous of idle starvelings
Your growing debt will create long proscription lists
Confiscating property and posterity.
In Rome some wars were financed by credit from banks
Banks were paid with the spoils of Roman victories
Your credit lifestyle began with Roman bankers.
Be prudent and carefully audit your leaders
Pray that they not convert your polished white marble
To coarse bricks made red by the blood of taxpayers
Pray that they not lead you to third world poverty
But deliver you from national bankruptcy.

11. Crime

In Rome some idlers became depraved criminals
They roamed the city's streets with malice and daggers
Gangs of thugs battled for streets of easy pickings
One had to make a will before venturing out.
Today your marauding rapper criminals are
Swaggering street punks whose success displays gold
Earrings and necklaces and with their nose rings ape
Escaped wild beasts ravaging city neighborhoods
Gangs of illiterates battling for street power
Somali technicals cruising your city streets
Repelling incursions as in OK corral
Inept shooters killing children and passers-by
Recreating Rome's games with their own live victims
Public spectacles of idlers shooting idlers
Plundering and murdering peaceful citizens
Killing for sneakers and jackets killing for cars
Excused predation energized for rioting
While their root leaders and elected officials
Justify their wild pillaging and savaging
With false precedents from the Song of Spartacus
Securing sure failure for their posterity.
On their self-proclaimed turf the criminal idle
Openly dealing drugs solicit losers those
Dubious detoxers who cashed their welfare checks
Selling them retail the Rx for dropping out
Dispensing the dream that reunites users with
Abusive nirvana and post orgasm blues
That old promise of virtual reality
That soft homogenous detachment in vivo
That chemistry induced from blue low to white high.

12. Violence

Rome's brutal scenic games its wild campus shows and
The Colosseum's blood soaked arena you now
Condense in insidious public campaigns by
Depraved mediatric execs whose own evils
Are exposed in promiscuous programming for
Movie and TV screens whose metaphors enthrall
Naive audiences idling as couch zombies
Waiting for stimulation by telethrills from
A priori violence whose showoff torture
Mayhem and murder define gaudy holograms
Imposed with skived body parts still oozing through gore
Their fadeout changing survivors to sexers as
Cameras pander sexual propositions
Then zoom in tight detailing love's corollaries
Gladiators with laurel and bonuses are
Bulk muscled studs gratifying empty women
Ladies with large contracts surrender as Sabine
Beauty queens pacifying penned bellowing bulls
Amid the loud impassioned gasps of great profits
Multimedia moguls rake in their billions.
In Rome mimics enticed green boys and girls to the
Harvest fields of scenic games and there ravished them
Your mimics do the same but then kill them as prey
Crucifixions along the Appian Way are
Now the electro executions on your screens.

13. Art

In Rome some art patrons enlivened their banquets
With lewd mimes manifesting carnal perversions
With sexual orgies and bestiality
Delighting their debased and drunken coterie
Their privately celebrated dramas became
Dissolute public rights performed in the Forum.
Your NEA takes private deviants public
Its amorous grants support safari forays
For hunters seeking fresh ordure trails leading to
The coveted trophy proclaiming public art
As the gay's golden arched stream falls baptizing the
Trembling lips of his lover's begging open mouth
Its amine splashes markings of four-legged rutters
Whose deep lowing is the visceral moaning of
The adapting animal brain not yet human.
When Rome subsidized art it got Greek copies
Today your decline is evident in your art
Do you want unions to negotiate your art?
Your post and lintel sculptures are Druid copies
Spheres and squares do not create Cycladic idols
A one foot man coarsely carved in wood lacks the art
Of a six foot Roman finely carved in marble.
Your paintings resemble those of Roman schoolboys
Spilled paints create only representative slob
A black wall with two white eyes is art for the blind
Cubism tries to impersonate Roman dice
Deformed by Picasso in his childlike paintings
Native drumbeats of cultural diversity
Cannot create orchestrations for pipes and lyres
In musical auditions your syntheses score
Over guitar malodies of country and rock.
Modern dancing is disabled by tortuous
Contortive poses and awkward acrobatic bends
Confirming the graceful dance of Roman maidens.
Your warehouse repro art also has its patrons
Those who subsidize soup cans and hype them as the
Airbrushed cold-rolled steel Mona Lisa framed and hung
In now galleries for feeling high dilettantes
Their glossy labels the power ads for pop art.

14. Women's Lib

In Rome the custom of pater familias
Was ignored by saucy wives who ruled their husbands
Who convened in women-only Good Goddess rites
Who repealed the laws restricting their dress and gold
Who threw naked swimming parties in the Tiber
Who if divorced could then recover their dowry
Who with impunity had their enemies killed
Who in the all-male senate protested against
Taxation without representation and won!
Your women's lib movement began in ancient Rome.
In Rome independent and excitable wives
Invited passionate young poets for readings
Caressed and then disrobed by artful poetry
They retired to couches while their handmaidens
Watched for absent husbands sitting in the senate.
Today your rebellious woman pursues power
As the bold spurning Vesta straddled and stirrupped
Sacrificing love's inseminal ritual
For the stainless steel surrogate penetrating
Her oral groove as she captures the struggling sperm
Whose chemistry solidifies her dominance
Of fatherhood and in responding replaces
Pater familias with mater familias.

15. Caesar

Our doctors birthed Caesar with a Roman dagger
Your doctors trained in medical gadgetry use
Hi tech to inject death with comatose life and
Mold zooid corpus mounds to handicapped infants
But refuse the walking sick simple physicals.
Caesar conqueror and earthly god entered Rome
With cool logic and bold incisive acumen
Looted its treasury and started civil war
Pompey in the south and in the north Caesar his
Disciplined legions executed killing drills
Roman corpses paved roads across the grassy plain.
Your southern plantation owners with their black slaves
Nurtured their fertile acres to grow civil war
Lincoln in the north versus Davis in the south
Blood congealed as dark putrefied gore of swamp muck
Arms and legs piled high on the Mason-Dixon Line
Rome and Pharsalus, America and Richmond.

When Caesar triumphator became dictator
My glorious republic fell and its people
Once engaged in government became slothful and
The mobs clamored only for bread and circuses.
Your faltering republic has not fallen yet
But already your people are disengaged and
Are clamoring for fast foods and parties.

16. Civil Order

In Rome some masters freed their dedicated slaves
Some even became masters of their own slaves and
Rose to prestigious social positions but slave
Ascendants never revenged their ancient masters.
You had black slaves whose citizen descendants now
Revenge your entire nation ex post facto
Retrologic enacting congenital guilt
If this be just then immigrants from Europe can
Revenge its royalty and aristocracy
For centuries of subjugation and serfage
For sharing hovels with beasts in killing winters
For deferring freedom by methane's early light.
Your argument in this matter is digressive
One could make a case for going back to Eden
There your naked Eve was an attractive nuisance
She enticed Adam whom your God made her master
Eve could claim discrimination and sue Adam
But your courts have ruled that an attractive nuisance
Causing injury can be held liable so
Adam could claim that Eve's enticement injured him
Could sue for the thorns and thistles of her action
Eve would have to compensate her master Adam
Who would be innocent of discrimination
But would your God be free of discrimination?
Disrespect for others is discrimination
Excessive compensation is disrespect
Excessive compensation is discrimination.

Pregnant drugheads buy crack/cocaine with welfare checks
Their vanity savages helpless foetuses
These women claiming civil rights to do so then
Demand more tax dollars for reproductive rights
You need to rally with logic your scattered states
For a fair and common civil order so that
You may walk in peace in your parks and city streets
Also be on guard against the philosophic
Moral seizures by minority anarchists
Pursuing power even to their detriment
Be sure to use your votes to oppose and excise
Those malignant ones subverting your republic.
Here as in Rome rude citizens lack good manners
They lack respect for others and also ignore
Their civil duties while demanding civil rights
Civil rights cannot be doled out like welfare checks.
One bad cop or one welfare cheat spreads like a mold
Only a single spore can spoil the entire loaf
In Rome we also had conspirators and thugs
Did I not save my republic from Catiline?
Civil order is required for civil rights
Civil duties are required for civil order
Civil duties are required for civil rights.

17. Sports Heroes

In Rome sports heros transcended daily life to
Combat death and escaping lived to fight again
Gladiators trained for methodical killing
Boxers with steel fists cracked skulls and shredded faces
I never liked it, how can one think with his brains
Scrambled like eggs with salted fish bits and liver
No, no, I do not speak of my favorite dish.
Charioteers raced at the Circus Maximus
Driving and whipping their fearless snorting horses
Making hairpin turns around its spina, then there
Were mad drivers blinded by oversize helmets
Who gambled their lives for fortunes and young women.
Gladiators and charioteers who survived
Were heros awarded laurel branches and gold
Their portraits and exploits were posted throughout Rome.
Today your pious search for athletic heros
Concentrates on multimillionaires whose hyped names
Market worthless products with designed persuaders
For brainwashed consumers of corporate logos
Your hero with his 12-foot reach dribbles a ball
And then with hubris performs his Homeric feat
Dunking it in a basket only 10 feet high.
Today TV directors coach sports heros in
Displaying their safe skills in deathless arenas
Their feet cushioned in hot consumer fetishes
Their mouths pigging out franchised fast foods downed by
Fizzing colas bulked up by subsidized syrup
Sweetening their vulgar displays as parvenus.

18. Impressions

Having been forewarned of your time compression mode
I spooled deferred subjects for quick retrieval so
In this my afternoon of the orator I
Now give you my peripatetic impressions:
In Rome some humans were sacrificed to our gods
In Salem witches were sacrificed to your God.
In Rome the senate opened with prayers to our gods
Today your senate is still praying to your God
And you even want your children to pray in school.
It took your God 6 days to create a nation
Roman legions created a nation in one day
Even your godless UN did it in one day.
In Rome museums propagated Roman life
Your holocaust museum propagates Judaism
Establishing Zionism in your capitol
It belongs in Tel Aviv not in Washington.
Our brave siege legions scaled Fort Masada and won
Your ATF agents scaled Fort Waco and lost.
Our Circus Maximus and Colosseum games
Have become your Disneylands and Las Vegaslands.
Rome sent an old triumvir to Carrhae and lost
You sent young presidents to Vietnam and lost.
In Rome the Forum was posted with daily news
Copied and embellished by reckless reporters
It was plagiarized, managed, and sold for profit
Events became gossip then scandal then libel
For their latest volumina greedy authors
Demanded more money and even royalties
Today your news media is doing the same.
Most Romans disliked government interference
In business they preferred individual
Effort supported by responsibility
My hearers! do these words sound familiar to you?

19. Legacy

From this rostrum I see your swelling campus crowd
Undulating in gratuitous selfish tides
Their cultural biases called diversity
Rushing rudely into theatrical theme parks
Pursuing gaudy cartoons as cultural gods
Clamoring that good jobs compensate the unskilled
Protesting for more just for birthing more and more
Your people are the same as those who were in Rome.
My hearers in last resort I appeal to you
You are already repeating Rome's excesses
You have before you the casuistry of Rome
You have before you its empirical results
Have you been chosen to escape Rome's precedents?
Have your tutelary mentors abandoned you?
Your republic evolved in part from my writings
I do not boast about this fact because I know
You are much less given to flattery than I
My hearers may I be the rector of your reforms?
I give you these counsels pro bono publico
I bequeath them to you as legacies without
Thoughts of profit or recompense but your private
Gifts in memoriam will not be rejected.

20. Peroration

In closing I shall not test your mindful patience
My prescribed time now descending with the low sun
Your forum's shadows now coalescing with dusk
My fondest thoughts return to my beloved Rome
Rome the city, Rome the nation, the republic
Powerful and wealthy beyond its GNP
With its government, language, and corpus juris
Rome the beautiful concreted by craftsmen who
Transformed plans to material magnificence
Homo faber clever, organized, violent
And shed his blood conquering the civilized world.
I see Rome's Pantheon dome on your Capitol
Rome glorious melting pot of the ancient world
Is now America the Rome of the new world
America you are Rome's updated version
Res Romana is now the American Way
The pilot program of modern cosmopolis.
Rome and America most powerful nations
Rome and America the wealthiest nations
Rome and America the world's master builders
Rome and America the world's grand republics
Esteemed for their successes and hated for them
Rome from seven rolling Latium hills to world conquest
America from New England to world democracy.
My reprieve ending and my time now expiring
I must answer the call of memento mori
America land of dreams you are Rome again.

(Rome Again was inspired by America's similarities
 to ancient Rome.)

4May93

Rosalie

From ego's conjured niche she is revealed to me
The long-legged pinup girl animated in her
Calendar wall temple descends to the dance floor
The Botticelli soft in flared skirt and high heels
Cool submissive silks adorn her female markers
As she orbits high in her strong feminine field
Slow seductive moves are strobed by ceiling starlight
Her vitals sustain our inchoate courtship as
We follow big bands to dance Fox Trots and Lindys.
She bulges wide open my young prudish pupils
She shivers me with her cool limbic blue-green eyes
Her serpentine black hair cascades her bare shoulders
Her fragrant essence magics me way out and it
Makes me sweat the high tides that flush away shyness
She resurrects me from my single loneliness
She pacifies my fitful glands and restless genes
She is the feedback of my biorhythm the
Target and pulsing inciter of my swelled head
She is my supplement she is my Rosalie.
Rosalie my Rosalie amore mio
I give you all my adoration without end
I give you all my love my amino acids
I give you all my assets and my bone marrow
And when we rendezvous in nightly oblation
I repose with love in your splendid receptors
Feeling the warm glanding gift of your output self..
A frenzied dancer glorifying you I rush
Into the hot gravity of your dense black hole
The ephemeral REM jazzer of my wet dreams
In the flesh transfer of my temporal burning
In the love flagellating in your ballroom dark
I give you me to incarnate and incubate
I give you my being in remembrance of me
My Rosalie sweet Rosalie in excelsis.

(Rosalie was inspired by the joy of dancing to
big bands 1935-1940.)

9May91

Spring

Earth's orbit tilts to ram in New England spring but
Swooping down from the arctic a polar vortex
Delivers the scourge of winter's savage offense
From once verdant lives dried oak leaves blown asunder
Are now scattered trembling on frozen zonal flows
My tall arborvitae wall now breached lies prostrate
In my potholed driveway paved with shiny black ice
Subducted winter plates crack gaping jagged rifts
In the swirling blizzard snow the specter of the
Monster snowman manifests itself hovering
Over winter's heaved ground pocked with frozen hummocks
Its glazed crust cracking from thundering bombs of sleet
The old oak's wind-burned branches now brittle ice cores
Break and fall helter-skelter on my glaciered lawn
Bones of skeletons scattered over killing fields.
Blizzard winds whistling through pines now broadcast the
Lion's roar claiming its territory and time
What was to be the hot foreplay of mating calls
Is now the torn and clawed remains of nascent spring
But sheltered in pond ice are the broad flat faces
Of frozen green frogs whose large bulging eyes stare at
A perigee moon bright lighting as midnight sun
Then comes the mute reprieve of hushed legato fog
Whose moist warm caresses of a snow mound expose
Winter's deep-freezed bodies in their noble embrace
A homeless man with his dog and an empty pint
On his cheek the rosary beads of frozen tears.
In my layered loose wool clothing I watch and wait
Wait with my hothouse impatiens for warm soil
For warm days and cool nights nurturing renewal
For water globules crawling under lucent ice
For the greening of iced brown leaves still hanging on
For the warmth of the womb to return just once more
For any thaw trickle to start something sprouting
For the day of loving in the sun's warm rad rays
For the bright day penetrating winter's deep holes
For a robin's trot to a spot of likely worm
When from dark homes neighbors emerge in insect force
To hear early pee-wee calls from trees still bare and
Cocks swollen with courting conning their wayward mates
See robins trot after worms in subway tunnels
And ducks do Jesus walks with raucous self applause
And the snapper its carapace moving slowly
Like a Roman testudo destined to survive
Then at last from the pond peepers in night concert
Herald the spring fires in which sapling ends froth while
Siren screams of loons echo from a molting moon.

(Spring was prompted by the Connecticut winter storm of
13Mar93.)

25Mar93

Superbowl

Tragically Correct

She is a blond beauty pursuing big athletes
A foxy flirt attracting and consuming men
She is a frost maiden sampling juice al fresco
He is a swift running back on a football field
A receiver of awards, trophies, and women
He is a great lion-hearted athletic star
She's the wily white leopard showing then hiding
He's the all-season hunter of that rare white game
The one whose face is camouflaged with painted mask.
She is the love goddess who comes down upon him
Whispering the myth of the Elysian field
Where loving ignores warnings of personal fouls
Where there is rampant free love without penalty
Leaving earth they ascend coupled Venus and Mars
Integrating in space their high sexual scores
Transcending interbred barriers they love and
In that fatal sexual mating is destined
His dominance and her defiance catalyzed
By the added reagents of rage and rebellion.
She's the love object of abuse and battery
She's the contused harlequin of red, black, and blue
The puffed-eye split-lipped matron of masochism
Who cowers before the assaulting man with ram
But with high adrenalin she flees intact and
With her great sexual power breaks him apart
Leaving only the can't cope egoist athlete
Sidelined he begs to run again his magic play
With her perfumed pheromones subliming to sex
With fast breaking pleasure ending in postmoan pain
She cuts him down but he resiles to beg again
She strengthens her struggle making her selfness bonds
He becomes spiteful coward making nonself bonds.

She is the sea foam beyond reach vaporizing
She is the spurning shrew planning and provoking
Ignoring father's rights and flaunting her lovers
She is the brazen doe grazing near the tall grass
The bold hyena taunting the dying lion
He is consumed by the wrath of her rejection
His jealous genes precluded from her mothering
He yields to smoldering ancient circuits the ones
Driving compulsion to requite for his lost love
He is the worker without reproductive rights
She is the queen bee supported by his labor.
Confronting but failing to reclaim what was his
He is the spurned one whose frustration festers rage
The game-faced pumped-up Mars forging his spear of war
He is the playmaker of the game breaking score
The hungry wild lion lurking in tall grass
Stalking and then leaping, pouncing and then seizing
Slaughtering and then devouring she who spurned him
And with his tragically correct jealousy
Spearing and shredding her magic girdle of love
Exorcising obsession with sadistic revenge.
There lies the slain sprawl of manifest defiance
The graffito making graphic, the destined end
Of its phantom love, the last view on live TV
The obscene conflict of a sex and hate syndrome
Leaving behind combined genes of a tragedy.

(Tragically Correct was prompted by mismatched
lovers destroying each other.)

20Jun94

Trojan Horse

From the plains of Hissarlik he commutes to the.
New car galleries displaying the advertised
Metal and plastic pastiche in dealer showrooms
The auto whose sleek low gravity silhouette
Is framed in black glass and crowned with power moon roof
Under the hood 8 liters of displacement in
A turbo charged V12 fuel-injected engine
The muscle and speed of 500 race horses
Whose profuse car dung litters the multilane pike
Trained by riding double overhead cams rocking
48 valves smoothing their compression cycles
The high performance tight cornering aero look
Luxury machine postures on a wheel base of
200 inches grounded over a wide track.
At night secreted behind the leather wheel a
Blinded Roman charioteer with wild horses
The reckless driver ensconced in his bucket seat
His body type prepped for the coming road battles
Strung out on his rack screaming through boom box speakers
Starting slowly it moves out onto the highway
In full view of all its enemies and begins
Running red lights and stop signs and intersections
Crawling up the turnpike entrance ramp it quickly
Accelerates to 100 in 6 seconds
Indy speeding as to endanger the lives of
Tailgating and jumping lanes cutting in and out
Pushing other drivers to shoulders and guardrails
The drunk suspended driver maiming and killing.

Tuned up for battle it cruises the turnpike lanes
Bypassing red flares marking the insured wreckage
And mangled bodies hidden by the bright curtain
The dirty expensive loud smelly killer is
Passing its body fluids soiling the highway
Spewing noxious emissions in a plume of death
Avidly consuming natural resources
The faulty product of fast breaks and slow repairs
The mechanized plague for profit rolls over us
The lethal want now packaged as a great gift is
More ruinous than Greek warriors sacking Troy
By day or by night in sunshine or blinding rain
On dry roads or wet roads in snow or on black ice
The all-weather all-season serial killer
Emerges with vengeance from its great Trojan Horse
Ending our living leases with highway slaughter.

(Trojan Horse was prompted by reckless drivers
injuring and killing with autos.)

23Apr93

Villa

The refuge of hot Rome or Providence was the
Seaside refuge at Antium or Narragansett
The villa with its atrium and patio
Its grounds with pollarded trees and trellised grapevines
Its concrete statues and Virgin Mary grotto
Women with olive satin skin its patina
Burnished by hot southern sun and strong siroccos
Wafting the exotic fragrance of sweet citrus
Their gentle manners reflected in calm dark eyes
The red-haired aunt with heaving freckled bosom and
The robust uncle with blond hair and fierce blue eyes
Standing erect as in the Praetorian Guard
Mustachioed men with suspended pantaloons
The man with the gold-capped canine always smiling
The interplay of required looks and responses.
Fresh-picked garden produce was piled in the kitchen
In the sink a dozen crawling and contentious
Lobsters brandishing their high open crusher claws
Roman legions with their short swords drawn for battle
Women cooked lobster sauce, made salads, and fruit bowls
Men talked politics angrily denouncing the
Job and ethnic discrimination against them
When word came out from the kitchen men went to work
Setting up a long table in the grape arbor
Children found chairs and set them around the table
With the table covered and places set out came
Two large pitchers of cool homemade Zinfandel wine
Then two large platters of linguine piled high with
Triumphant pyramids of lobster tails and claws
Vesuvius erupting again smothering
The pasta with its flowing hot red lobster sauce
Celebrating the taste treat bestowed by the gods
After the pasta came two large bowls of salad
Garnished with fresh basil and cloves of crushed garlic
Anointed with extra virgin olive oil and
Baptized with balsamic vinegar and then tossed
Eaten with relish to balance pasta bellies
After that the vine ripened fruit assisted by
Espresso demitasse with homemade anisette
Spiked by the acrid pungent smoke of stogies.
As night settled over the grape arbor retreat
The single bulb hanging from its dark verdant vault
Exposed its naked light augmented by backlit
Moonlight filtering through the vault's vine filigree
The stage was set for all that glorious music
The accordion, mandolin, and piccolo
Backing the wine-coached bravura tenor who sang
O Sole Mio, Torna a Surriento
Heartfelt anthems of Naples lavishly rendered
Ballads sung with brio and emotive beauty
Intoned nostalgia for what was abandoned
Gone are those summer nights of food, wine, and music
Gone are nights in the gardens of Narragansett.

(Villa was inspired by summers spent in Narragansett, RI
in the 1930's.)

15Sep93