Three Poems & Two Haiku by Raymond Turco

 

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: 

“Pape Satàn, pape Satàn aleppe!1 

 

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!”

1 Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy - Inferno, VII, v. 1. Plutus, the Roman god of wealth turned demon, clucks this cryptic phrase at Dante and Virgil at the entrance to the fourth circle of Hell, which holds the souls that have abused their wealth through greed or improvidence. Commentators debate on the potential meanings, with most positing that it is a demonic invocation to Satan, pape meaning “damn” or “oh” and aleppe being an Italianization of the Hebrew letter א (aleph), as in “the origin that contains everything”, or “the one above all”.

 

 

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.

  

 

Two Haiku

[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. 

Raymond Turco is a poet and playwright born in Hackensack, NJ, USA. He writes poems in English and Italian and has a special affinity for European history, travel, surrealism, magical realism, and absurdism. The author of nine stageplays, he has published his poetry in the Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and with Bordighera Press, among others. He sits on the Board of Directors of the Cliffside Park Arts Association and is the organization’s Director of Literature. His first chapbook, Rays of Light and Darkness, was published with Finishing Line Press in 2024.