Narcissus Looks in the Mirror

Who can call this man a nattering ass,

(I say I created my looking glass),

Since I opened his mouth to amuse me

With my own exquisite philosophy?

No one can say I didn’t make the world

That flaps like a flag some soldier unfurled.

I needn’t apologize that I willed

To have that soldier spared, wounded, or killed.

There’s no one to extend my regrets to,

Except my entirely imagined “you.”

I make, making sure I can change the day.

“Prove it!” you demand, which I made you say.

There’s only my beautiful Narcissus

And can be only him as me, no “us.”

GOON

“The voice of the people” can’t leave too soon.

The fun was almost all he could endure,

Especially making game of the poor,

Though he didn’t like being called a goon.

Oh, how he’d made the great all look the same,

Throwing merde on every “leader’s” name.

They laughed at his japes without knowing why,

And threw gold at his head with insane glee.

He’d peeked up their wives’ dresses for a fee.

He’d danced on toes defying all to cry.

The best was the toy gun pulled from his hump

(Not a deformity — a holster’s bump),

And waved around the world with bulging eyes.

“See this?” he crooned, “No one who loves me dies.”

When They Fell

Did each cease to be an angel

The moment he or she rebelled?

What creatures were they when they fell,

Who spewed and farted, bled and yelled?

A kind of dead, not devils yet,

Before the rest of time in Hell,

They must endure a monster’s spell

In payment of their Master’s debt.

So men today learn to betray

Themselves and all they ever knew

As truth. They haven’t lost their way,

They’ll say. “We’re just making things new.”

The air is full of monsters’ lies

Falling like newly wingless flies.

CROWS

My daughter says crows have a special caw

When they want others to come out and play.

She says they are nothing but beak and claw

Stuck to flapping smudges like to black clay.

Tonight they are a thousand cries, raucous

And shrill like legislative caucuses.

When the sun is gone, the crows, like all birds,

Will vanish and become silent as words

Pressed between the pages of a closed book,

As present as a European rook.

They huddle all night in their rookery

And at dawn explode in all directions

To escape each other, make mockery

Of murther. There’ll be just a few defections.

The Fool

A man isn’t a man without being a fool,

At least that’s what the Fool learned in idiot school.

He began a money-infatuated ghoul

Chomping on the corpse of another greedy mule.

He soon grew morbidly obese on such fuel,

Then capered on to Fame’s self-deluding gruel

(Which turned half his tiny brains to stiffened stool).

All that power, women, and riches made him cruel

And he began to see all of life as a duel.

“Never lose, say ‘sorry,’ or forgive, and you’ll rule,”

He said, “Remember, your world is my private jewel.”

Then smiling men of stratagems made him their tool

And wiped his chin when he’d rather frequently drool.

Their hots for him have only just begun to cool.

When It’s All Over

After Neptune and Amphitrite, his wife,
The harpies, gorgons, and nymphs, Proteus
And Scylla, and hosts of lesser deities,
Who are these nobodies fomenting strife,
As though revenge wars were the only use
Of an immortal life beneath the seas?
“Not even a rape, just sly flirtation,”
But theft of an old conch, cracked and silent,
Can lead to the thrusting of a trident
Toward flesh transformed, sickened by mutation.
Lost to memory, they may soon be gone,
Even the famous of the pantheon.
No catastrophe did they perpetrate,
No mass drowning, no tsunami of hate.

The Jack-In-The-Box Dictator

The jack-in-the-box dictator dominates,
Green scowl squeezing envy into hate.
Sinners pray to his nibs in the store window.
Draped in gold chains, clutching His scepter,
He laughs in a ruthless show of temper.
Henchmen wait for new orders from below.
Beautiful cities outlive their architecture,
Columns collapse, statuary crumbles,
"Return my faith," a lame crone mumbles.
Speeches, even sermons, become lectures,
Endless repetitions, what everybody knows.
When the militia deploys, the catacombs
Fill with refugees and silenced deserters.
No murderers here, only torturers.