Rome

WHEN MARCUS CRASSUS

when Marcus Crassus
died in battle
everybody wept
the grief
shook Rome

the whole
city consumed
by sadness

slaves being tortured
prisoners crucified

took time
out of their suffering
to make sure
they found time
to weep

gangs patrolling the Subura
to ensure there
would not
be a single
soul
failing to
feel heartbroken

for if the gods
could not fail to be
grief stricken
how not
mere mortals?

so tragic that one
so rich and powerfully
should be put
to death so aptly
suffer
so horribly

so wrongful a vengeance
so totally
beyond the pale
of social justice

OVID IN EXILE

in the Senate
on the Forum

they are not talking about it
no one is talking about it
Ovid
is in exile

the young Emperor
Augustus, formerly Octavian,
friend to the poets, patron of the arts

has blotted his copybook,
sent Ovid
into exile

no headlines, not a
scrap of graffiti
to record this event

too much truly momentous
on the horizon
to let this
sublime moral moment
undercut, let alone
overshadow
the great transformation

civil war over
the Caesar legacy entrenched
for who knows how long,
even the most conservative guess
will kick off with
a century or two, a good
few centuries

an Empire has been born
and Ovid missed its birth
for Ovid
is out of town

and, to be honest, who
really cares,
gives a damn about the impact
of this on his poetry

lately become
what was promised, always
promised

as the statues go up
to enshrine the new image

Ovid is in exile
and Rome and its fictions
transformed as expected
continue to be

Rome knocked
on my window

Rome
punched through
my front door

not sure if it were
a cohort or a maniple
dragged me
off away
with them

fired a bullet
through my bedroom
(so ahistorical and
anachronistic)

blood everywhere
now I have to pledge
my death
to please latest
golden boy Emperor
in his Colosseum

AT ROME

AT ROME

they look back
longingly at Rome
whose triremes ruled
the Mediterranean

whose legions kept
control over
much of the
known world

whose slaves rebelled
and were crucified
along the entire
length
of the Appian Way

by the monstrously
rich General, Marcus Crassus

who would come to
be captured by the Parthians
and fed molten gold

CLEAN

CLEAN

Senator HIJKL
dawdles through the hearing

playing solitaire
fiddling
with the Tarot

I see
The Fool
The Falling Tower
The Hanged Man

I do not see
Death
or
The Devil

but I am not observing him
as clinically as I should
those cards may
have slipped by me
by sleight of hand

and now
a pencil is produced
for doodling or
perhaps sketching
whilst the video
runs he
doodles away

sketches a future
I’m sure as works of art go
it is
no Picasso
not Cubist or
blue period

certainly no Guernica

Oh JKL doodles
doodles away

the walls of Republican Rome
once covered
in such graffiti
under Augustus
were given
a clampdown extreme
right royal
and (most) imperial clean

never had
to suffer a repeat of
the process

never
the call to go
through such a scouring
again.

MOON

In my grey dressing-gown
I feel and look like Jedi

solar consciousness figure
I suppose, no daimonic
Plutonic energy
running rampant if released
all to the power of two
by two

Ah yes!
dark life dark matter
dark energy

infra-crimson spectrum emission
from the ultra quantum soup

out of which blood chaos,
quite naturally,
radical individualism
sith vicious boy emperor
you do it my way
steam punk gladiator
in colosseum 360
sensurround to
google into gorgeous
reality
every single Roman Empire
be and wannabe
under every single (or
binary sun)

so let me
meld with snake and spider
and creatures chthonic
in my rainforest
on my swamp planet
whipping up
some steaming mushroom stew

or find some shade and water
(just a modicum) in the heart
of the desert

think of oasis somewhere
in the desert of my heart

grey is ash, grey is
sombre, grey is plaster

grey is everything that
yearns to be silver

yearns
to be animate
to be animation

to be turquoise, indigo
or royal blue ocean
to
rise in triumph
on a gigantic moon.