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Book Melt

                        by Robert Louis Chianese

 

Ink fades, pages flow,

glosses bubble, spines bow,

margins, charts fold to batter,

history stew, poem splatter;

art gumbo, econ soup,

letters drip, words enloop,

puddle, jell, bake, and set:

            best melt I ever et.

 

Lost Book: Aristotle’s “On Comedy”

            By Robert Louis Chianese

 

                        I.

We know Tragedy’s cutting words—

Hubris, Catharsis, and henchman Fate—

but ringed Comedy eludes us.

Aristotle's companion work is lost,

crumbling in some dark cave.

Without this comic theory part,

we’re drawn to negatives, elevated woe,

convinced defeats ennoble us!

Real Comedy we’ve soured on—

family endurance, civic health,

virtues matured by muddling through-—

less cool. Comedy is just a joke.

 

 

                        II.

"Tragedy is Comedy incomplete," he says, a clue.

So Oedipus meets his pater Laius still,

both made stupid by the gods.

Barren crossroads, checked chariots,

they will not let each other pass.

Laius: "Who are you, boy?"

Oed: “I am Prince--not ‘boy,’ Old Man,

and would bash your brains

for standing in my way."

Thus fly the olde tyme insults,

though a glimmer grows in the paterfilial eye.

Laius: “I used to speak and swagger like that too;

You even look like . . . . but  say, where ya from?"

Oed: "Corinth, on my way to Thebes

to flee an evil fate where I’ll beat the prophecy . . . "

Laius: "What prophecy?” the old King marveling now,

connecting dots blind Tragedy keeps apart.

"Oed: ”That I am to kill my Father and marry Mother,

or so a drunken banqueter said.”

Laius: “My God, my Son! "

Oed:  “Dad?” Comic recognition

breaks like rosy day. Plots reverse;

insights flow upstream, tears in happy eyes;

the planet heaves a sigh.

Hail Father! Hail Son! is order of the day.

Shoulder to shoulder they douse the plague,

repair their broken world.

Jocasta mother-wife cheers both home,

with ribald anecdotes.

 

 

TRY

 

A Villanelle of War

by Gawaine Caldwater Ross

 

 

The banging of the hammer on the anvil never slows,

The smith is making armor for the knights upon the ride,

And the warriors strike the cities like a swarm of tornadoes.

 

The Pope himself he visits with a mood so bellicose,

He shows them how to slaughter and to kill with pride.

The pounding of the iron on the anvil ever grows.

 

The warriors are burning to pulverize the foe,

It is their solemn duty to make killing a surprise

And the warriors strike the cities on their way to Jericho.

 

Each fierce attack draws the people to the show,

The King tells all the soldiers there'll be booty to divide,

While the clanging of the hammer on the anvil screeches “NO!”

 

But will the Pope delay us? Will princes ever know

That murdering for God is something to despise,

But the warriors never falter, they attack like tornadoes.

 

At Jerusalem they ponder but their cause is grandiose,

The Holy City can and should be taken as a prize,

They hear the drumming on the anvil, glad it never slows

And the warriors clamber over like a horde of tornadoes.

 

 

 

The Chickasaw Plum  -  Volume VI - Number 3 - March 2009

 

 

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