Hrodberht Opts for Briggs & Stratton

His name means Glorious One, Bright Fame.

In the far future he’ll be called Robert;

then Robin (Hood?), then Bob, leader of the "Vain Boys," who fix gas lawn mowers on Wingnut and Main.

But that f****** future's yet to come—

For now he’s chieftain of the Alemanni (“all men")

Who’ve just bought a shipload of feral wives

from Orkney off a gloating me-too Viking crew

signed up to be the new East Roman

emperor’s guards—they say they’ll have hotties

aplenty out there in Constantinople,

the greatest city in the world.

Not like these ropey Scots whores, who’ve shown balls already,

be it noted, kicking Gaulish butt—a fine

set of lovelies for Hrodberht’s rapist gang—

"Once they’ve settled down."

(Not that that'll ever happen!)

Meanwhile, what the f***'s

to be done about King Atilla, bitch,

who’s invaded North Rhine–Westphalia

with a hundred thousand wog horse archers?

First, homing in like a hornet,

then honing down like a plane,

half slanted-eyed Mongols, the rest

Vandals, Ostrogoths, Suebi—who at least,

jabber in an Indo-European tongue.

The Chinese call them the Xiongnu.

Here, white guys call them Huns.

And Hrodberht must henceforth pay them tribute

—some of the loot might do from

Lutetia's sacking, which that city's bourgeois-bohème (or bo-bo) crew,

call Civitas Parisiorum,

aka "the City of the Parisii."

Or perhaps something in the hopey nest egg bin?

Who, after all, needs a fake Roman silver

breastplate-helmet "twin set" anyhow

that Macronius himself may have worn,

that lousy, lying pissant Khazar had sworn.

On the other hand—through both hands, indeed—

Attila is said to crucify those too stingy

nailing them to the nearest sacred tree.

Moral

Better to ensure that Briggs & Stratton engines smoothly run!

Not even creeping Jesus can deny the unrelenting native Hun!

Thursday, January 30, 2025

The Hobgoblin Snoozes

The hobgoblin has been dreaming.

How long? Centuries at the least.

But that’s an exaggeration,

And who gives a damn? Hobgoblins

Don’t recognize time! It’s awake

Now—AI conjures up its squinty eye—

But soon rolls over with a sigh,

Returning to its habitual nighttime place

Those nightmare humans to efface.

No, was that it? What did the warning say?

With fleeting lapse, the goblin brain

Sinks back a-bed to snooze a bit again.

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

The Basilisk Stare

"Everything is what it is, and not another thing."—Bishop Butler

The more intelligent, the less you sleep

And, exhausted, slower creep along,

Rhythm lost to redundant rhyme,

Pleonastic prosing lacking sweep.

(Make mention here, perhaps, of crime?)

Some things are shallow; other things are deep!

He fixes the future with his basilisk stare.

And you might wish you had one, too.

Beware! The detritus of longed-after powers

Mounts fetid in what once were pretty bowers.

For “longing” has a hidden "Freudian" sense.

This wombfill of stale pleasures is immense:

We are too many, though we think too few.

These are some things bizarro Faustus knew.

You can’t just cuddle? So, there's this twist:

"Post coitum omne animal triste

est—sive gallus et mulier."*

In this matching of hombre and mujer,

Those unhappy now might yet get sadder.

There is no burden that the earth can't bear,

And no fine prospect that's not best left bare.

Pasture now, tomorrow may be missed.

Dumps full today will, in time, get fuller!

The acropolis of the ancient Roman city of Pergamon, now in the Republic of Türkiye

*A saying attributed to the great physician of antiquity, Galen of Pergamon: "All animals are sad after sex—Gauls as well as women."

(Evidence that there were indeed such saddened Gauls in Anatolia in that era is provided by St. Paul, who visited them; he says unambiguously in his Letter to the Galatians 5:12: "I would they were even cut off which trouble you.")

Epigraph: Bishop Joseph Butler, Fifteen Sermons, Preface § 39 (1844)

Tuesday, January 27, 2025