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Canto Populi

We cannot live
on your past imagined glories.
Rome starves
and Nero wears a laurel wreath.

This is no bread for the soul,
this stale meal puffed to importance.
We cannot live on your lies.

Your galley ships are full
and sailing now to make the world
a housebroken dog
waiting for you to open another tin.
Your cities blaze with death,
cordite fills the air
as the fiddle waits for your fingers
and the piper pipes you an overture.

Your brave mendacities make the world
a fungus covered slippery rock.
You hide behind your predator's eyes
behind a friendly smile, forge a spine
and move and shake and make the world
unfit for standing tall
but fine for crouching, waiting
to be drenched in a sea of sophistry.

Honor stinks,
a stalwart ship
broken on a half-hidden tongue.
And the known world is suddenly Rome.

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