1
Celucci found himself
surrounded by his own
and they prospered—
and the god gave him a beauty mark
halfway up his thigh so that any girl
or boy who eyed it even in the dark
would fall haplessly into his world
Celucci brought his brothers and sisters,
cousins and nephews, barbers, sailors,
shepherds, all for prosperity—
a family circle that first,
last, always must
enlist and having served, join VFW
or Am Vets
That the corn might grow,
that the green vines drop grapes,
that clouds of bees foster honey,
dogs shepherd flocks, men steer the plow,
and girls churn butter: Lord hear us,
for your mercy is great.
That cows might spew milk,
buffalo rustle calves, partridges flit
from brush to bush: Lord hear us.
That soldiers avoid our fields,
tanks veer from our groves,
and Warthogs stop drilling our barns:
Lord hear us,
for your mercy is great.
MAKE the bonefire hot,
STRIKE with the agnus castus,
and BRING Dasius before ME.
2
Dasius had a why, but we have
no what
: a ripped script—
Bassus sd/ “Things won’t be undone or golden’d”—
Now, the gods give you rest—
to sleep is not a dishonor when trials are done.
May your dreams be peaceful,
and may lovely friends lie close and give you warmth.
May the gods wake you when the time
of challenge is near—
when wheel rolls downward for you to stop,
when bone turns deep in the mountain’s door,
when breath blows hard in your face
and script calls for players on the stage—
then meet, hang, and finish well—
for the bonefire is hot, Dasius,
and the birdsong you hear
calls you.
3
Dasius won’t mount
the Lord of Misrule’s chariot—
wheels of polished wood
: spokes of hickory revolving transparently
: hubs of elm turning as film reels
: iron axle humming
as a coin operated massaging mattress
in Hoboken for the Poetry Editor
Beau Brummell who once dated
a girl named Patty O’Dasius
who hailed from Fort Lee
: her father had a seat
on the stock exchange from whence he bought
and sold Bridgestone before the Explorers
flipped,
wheels rotating crazily
like pinwheels in the funhouse
: terrifying to carry the whole isle
Moher to Shannon
The Great Dictator becomes the big wheel—
the rest of us are cogs
4
Celucci buys Dasius a martini
and explains how the bigger wheels collect venture capital,
“Make your pitch around six minutes long
and try not to reinvent the wheel”
We have spun out the subtle ramifications ever since—
and like broken wheels careening from curb to curb
we break our neighbors until they swerve
and swivel like us into each other
madly busting back and forth over
sidewalks and into storefronts
“America,” our neighbors scream
“America” over and over as we bounce off each other
then sprawl into Donovans or Elks Club or Amvets
and buy each other shots so we forget one generation
to the next what we’ve done to our
neighbors for seemingly no reason
we can understand anymore until we do
it again shamelessly our arms and thighs blotchy
from bruises past and present
all hoisted into position to roll
again like drunken barrel-chested
sailors whose only sin
was watching Hell Divers too many times
one Saturday night at the flicks.
5
Like Dasius we wish we had taken
ourselves less seriously earlier in life,
wish we would have known that vinyl
might skip but digital has no balls,
that Brooks Brothers made stuff for women
as well as squares,
that plastic goes from gold to platinum
like poop through the scooper,
that films shot on Panaflex
have more depth than movies on Scotch,
that department stores shouldn’t name
themselves Target, that Auckland has trumpets
with flames bursting instead of fanfares,
that chairs without arms are chairs without butts,
that vodka made in Ireland reads
like books about SMILING—
6
Dasius didn’t get the whole Seinfeld
thing and Larry David leaves him broken—
Celucci gets so impatient with people
who believe in the supernatural—
children who eenie meenie minie
are no worse than old women who try to cast
spells on the birds—
they’re benchwarmers at the Peace Park,
whiskered, plenty of crusts bagged from the day-old
table in their retirement home’s lobby—
pigeons fight with squirrels while the witches
throw gingerbread wadded over their lovers’ hair
or fingernail clippings—
their ancestors had only the supernatural to amuse
because they couldn’t read or write or even draw—
they lived in dirt huts and ate rotten bread or beets
or potatoes or turds—
their children were no more than mud enrobed vermin—
how they survived much less thrived we’ll never know—
but no one made it past Czar Josef,
their entire towns flattened like grapefruit beneath tanks
: an end to their suffering? only relatives
in America know
7
After dessert, who can testify to the real
real of Dasius’ dilemma or give eyewitness
of other saturn-alias where personators
must slit their own throats?
Why was Dasius beheaded one
month prior to the festival?
Why was Saturn an unpopular god
until his festival occurred?
Hieronymus, the lions have unbridled the stable—
sing to your mounts,
"I saw Dasius and the souls of those
who had been likewise beheaded for the testimony of Jesus,
and for the word of God . . .
They lived, and reigned for the thousand years . . ."
whether an act of love or greed
to grant all earthly power
through breath and bone
(though Dante believed his good
intentions bore bad fruit)
8
Crispus’ da removed to Greece
evil began when jealousy unquenched
read reports of foreign entanglements
unknotted and nodded to executioners dispatched
such without theory have all fallen
when polymorphous present succumbs
in the throat of eternity
: only the shape changer
could understand Crispus and Absalom
and their strange fathers
not a frigg’n song to sing about Crispus
worse Crispus sunk to limbo
while his da rose to Martian prominence, Constantine—
and would that have saved his son his wife mother
breathing again within campaigns in the East
9
Dasius’ namesake buried by the Danube
progenitor entombed in maybe Vukovar
or Dalj--no script bears witness yet a diploma
graved in bronze carries some
of Nero’s breath even into Parthia [into Illyricum]
maybe Crispus was like Zorba
in that he kicked ass on his father’s
behalf but his father could not
fathom his love of the zither
so the instrument of their parting
“strummed once, twice, then hung”
the sorrow I feel for Dasius
and Crispus is linked to my sadness
at my mother’s passing
both men served the emperor admirably
yet were sacrificed through some fluke
of irrationality linked inexorably
to the irrationality capturing mother’s
mind in Alzheimer’s even the notion
of a mind captured suffers
from the irrationality of dualism
since no mind can be captured from our
body which possesses it utterly
whether Constantine felt guilt
(whether Bassus felt guilt)
damnatio memoriae official dementia
10
Lo, there was great
shimmering as Crispus
parted the sky and sent
packets of foil fluttering to Earth
it wasn't the shock of scooting
out of the primordial
rather the onset of being
conscious of rebellious mud
between the ears
sounding out images that likened
to nothing willed or wanted
not SIN but the Ass in me
relinquishing regeneration
restyling as EYE and enveloping
making Crispus less pilot and more mad
bomber more wild quo vadis and less quidditas
more exclamatory and less residual
more love of the new
Crispus learned the fable that on Xmas
Eve at Midnight the Dog will speak, “Taxes can
be paid online.”
