Ides

What’s edgier than a knife?

Nothing, according to Julius,

not a surgical birth

nor a fucking salad with anchovies.

Where is our Brutus?

Damn sure not in the Senate.

Cleopatra was cleaner,

snagged a Tony while she was at it

seducing with her body

eyes of kohl, dangerous curves,

serpentine sway of hips

and a killer asp.

This mockery of Rome

with shit-smeared walls housing cowards

who use their knives at dinner,

or chuckle at their clever ability

to rest blades in the carcass of history

while the monster rages through

once-hallowed halls,

the same room where Henry Clay held this nation together by force of will and eloquence of speech, the compromised compromiser and everything he stood under

looming large today, the checks unbalanced, books cooked to damn death

Our decline staring us in the face, Faulkner in Stockholm and Eliot in England,

Boston in Berlin.