Caesar’s Ghost

by Libelouseye

Posted to Poetry on 2002-12-18 20:38:00



Et tu, Brutal warehoused are your ashes?
long shelved, drunk dead by your dark half Cassius
abandoned by young bride who proved that a gash is
the piggy who ran with your dough

She and the booze were the self inflict lashes
the poet in you must have thought how one cashes
the guilt of a fatherhood measured in bashes
by the lost and the scarred you bestowed

And I in my exile, alone, on the run
a rebel who since you took shit from no one
will fill in the irony of dutyful son
retrieve your pallid remains

Twenty-two years cemetery you’re shunned
who has stepped forward? That’s right there’s no one
that looked backed to see there was something undone
unlamented, there’ll be a refrain

You’ll rest on the mantle of my sister’s home
’tis better I guess than the dust catacomb
or a sprinkling gesture on meaningless loam
anointed by meaningless prayer

Hell Caesar! I did not inherit your throne
a life lived removed from your chromosomes
leads to recovery, gives rise to a poem
from one who plans to live grayer


(written on the dicovery that my abusive pater, who briefly married a fat young suckling and drank himself dead twenty-two years ago 12/21 has had his ashes stored in a coffee can unclaimed)