The Coin Cabal
The biggest wigs and industrial bureaucrats
sit around the meeting table of Mammon,
to spew Babel and fix the market to suit their purses,
thrown around the room like heavy stones.
As recession drags the proles into depression,
winners stuff their pockets and their coffers,
letting loose their alpha-ululations:
Please Satan, please Satan, the Aleph,
in anapests we call Your name!
Planets align to make us Croesus,
our appestats are swollen pots of gold.
We inflict upon the world an applanation!
Papas tenant not any unction,
paeans praise us—no compunction;
we gorge until we achieve apnea!
Pape Satàn, pape Satàn aleppe:
the Caliph of our Caliphate!”
Οἱ Λωτοφᾰ́γοι (Hoi Lōtophágoi)
We are mariners of a run-down ship
who have lost our way and come to drink,
and in this pub on thrones we sit:
too long we sit, so we forget to think.
Each man a king, each king a man,
among us stalks no harridan:
we have no women and no wives,
we imbibe to keep ourselves alive.
Birds roost on rafters, feathers black,
we’ll never give the bottle back.
Each glass’s bottom bears a muddled lotus fruit;
we cast off our names, we have no repute.
We hear no news and talk no politics,
the air is thick with sleep and sour mix
as a fog descends that will not dissipate
while in the bourbon haze we titillate
our sordid fantasies deranged,
arranged in bottles all along the counter here;
what we lack in will we make up for in beer.
About we go milling with Millers in hand,
at close of the night we struggle to stand.
Our laughter is near but far away,
our minds we lost on seas of yesterday.
The barkeep smiles and bids us stay,
we revel forever in labyrinthine holidays.
When Saint Patrick banished all the snakes,
they came here in order to partake
in carousing, rousing ‘round the Serpent King,
the Mayor, the Turk and bid us sing
the serpent-song of sadness too sublime:
“If only we put down the booze in life,
we’d have more time.”
The Man of the Subterranean Sun
Approaching the underground temple,
the metro station of the Port Authority,
we the Philistines, harried, unkempt,
rush through two open doors to catch our trains,
to give a sacrifice to Ba'al-zəbûb.
And holding open the doors is a vagrant of the long hairs,
eyes gouged,
begging for alms from foreign barbarous men.
This Samson threatens to release the doors and crush the temple
in denial of our sanctity,
forbidding us to perform yet another holocaust.
[Tears roll down my cheek…]
Tears roll down my cheek;
blue spruce leaves self-sacrifice,
the forest-face trembles.
[Icy wind…]
Icy wind;
my heart:
cavern in the storm.
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