No one knew how to replace the clogged whips
Drenched gules by sumac and witchcraft
Then viziers met to extract more labor
And consensed to build to heaven
It almost worked
worked well enough they didn’t need tax collectors any more
Hungry people could sign up at any time
You just had to live in a narthex
and soak your fingers into votive embers
stew tubers like everyone else
no exotic spices
And those who did
heard cosmic frequencies ring out in earth-bound tones
Everyone remembered the tunes and hummed them furrowing the soil
Never did silver plates clash with pious devotions
Prostitutes prospered in both
The city-states grew and grew
All roads led to Rome, and wealth to Rome, Moscow, Beijing, Vienna
The cities threw down walls for a faster grasp on the streams of incoming ducats
But as biology continued to grow
it jostled and quarreled with formulae that wouldn’t expire
that weighed heavier and heavier on the ligaments of pistons and gears
All were confounded
Finally a computer spit out an answer:
Only the weak know enough to control the strong
for the strong man knows only himself
Fine, yelled the multitude, new bonds for industry
Servos crackled in their torques
laying down tracks in a glut of unsated desires
Suddenly comptrollers wondered—why are they handing out educations like tokens at a casino
So, under cover of the once again requisitioned whips
rationalizations were freshly untainted
The carousel horses of expiation spun ever faster
Laughter throughout the cascading boxcar
Vodka caucused with diazepines
undisputed intensified indicated
that surge broadsided me
where’s the stash
hey what what not
permitted entry
extract of alkaloids
glucose gamified
what we shouldn’t have tried
totally done and gone
This poem was published in issue 8 of Main Squeeze, March 20, 2023.
Andy Oram
April 9, 2020