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I miss you Horace dear friend, how we laughed
how i
miss drinking wine under the olive trees
at your villa in Capua,lollygagging, drinking
new wine, how i miss the purple-scented
accacia and the buzz of the summer afternoons
we were
just like the sons of eutruscan kings
how i miss you dear poet
yourfearless dark moods
green fig eyes steady unafraid even
of the emperors stealthy needs, his
conquests,his avataristic concerns
for nothing,
nothing at all
he wanted you dear poet
wanted your living spa
fresh as the waters at Vesta
there in the giant apartments of the empire
he threatened your life once
night-drunk on grecian elixirs
there by the gurgling fountains, he said
smashing a goblet against
the marble floors( it rattling)
There! There! he shouted
Do me this dearest poet, Do me this!
There is life, welcome to it!
in life
there was nothing that you could not steal
once it was just
grist for the mill and your lively pen
"if only we could see ourselves as others see
us" you said that would be happiness indeed
you found hidden wine even in the sloppiest
joint, the driest spring, the lousiest rathole
in twisted taverns and forlorn houses
and in the palaces of emperors
"joints" you said
"they're all just joints"
and kings and slaves,courtesans, matrons
soldiers centurions why
they're just a bunch
of old guys
,"there are songs that can drive off sorrow"
you said, "beware the young women
rich beyond gold and silver
stay away from their charms
be afraid
afraid neither of the sword or the emperors
sternest glance
but as for these girls stay away!"
you taught and knew
how to live back then
when loves burning fires
dashed you to embers &
charred you
you simply dusted off your rind
smacked your thick african lips
and poured another libation
in the shade of these thick green
vines, neither time nor place
will forget you,there beneath the
giant fig tree,
in the green shadowed
foliage in its cool shadow
"shhh listen! you say shhh!
what difference love or hate
youth or old age?!
what difference?
All is passage!
All is passage!
passage all!"
oh i am
so forlorn,so wracked
with pain
so foolish in my ways
old man
hard times can drive a man so
insane
splitting your gummy sides
joints splintering on the rack of pain
remembering lost love
my dear boy you have a fever
a simple love fever
it will pass
as all things pass
i am become sick
of it
from the loss of you.
ìAnd what do you want from her?î
you ask,"meowling children??, a hot house
filled with toenails?, with boiling culadrons?
l Dishes? Appeasement? What exactly?
Is it marriage that you seek?
S
no less!, to the Emperor himself
I at least have poetry to offer
What have you got? Your dick?!
no one can answer this today
or yesterday or tommorow
what can love finally bring?
besides its loss, its final sigh
a final consumation
on a rickety old bed
toothless and gummed
a yawn?
i hold its child against
my chest this child of love
and smother it
with my giant breasts
dash its brains against
the wall
the hell with love
i say
the hell with all of them
and break down weeping
once again
you've had too much of the old wine.
and you look at me with
those green eyes and smile
full of beans and wine
and chicory
full of the bread you have
grown on this land of yours
ì try the new wine its betterî you say
ì get a rubdown, that's what you need, calm down,
down, dammit you're making a scene or
ì drink till your heart drops into
estatic sleep and remember
the loving arms of this full
night of summer
forever.
make a choice you fool
so what if she's married
to the emperor
so what if she
more than one
and will again
so what if she won't leave him for you
go to her you fool
and drink your fill,
from her clear well water
what can love take away
that hasn't already been taken
what can it give that you don't
already possess
look at the good side, you're neither
slave nor soldier
but at this rate you'll be neither
a stupid beggar at the door
of the eternal city
what value does love have?
what value
to us today what value
in our canned merchandised
lives, mixed together with
the smell of rott
fish in the hallways, & chemical spary
the frayed carpets
the preserving marmalade of it, its lick
what's a fuck between friends
kill passion and you kill
God
Kill God and you kill love
Kill love and you have nothing
left, the clicking clock
the rotation of a dead
rock,nothing, nothing, nothing
better to accept the boundaries
nature has invented for herself
better to flee,clothes trailing in
the dark night, better to give up
altogether, Horace old frieind
what are you to to do?
how shall you be appeased?
how shall this fire find its
ash?
how? how? how?
(to be cont.)
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