Banana Republican

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

—Anon.

A child contrived of Moctezuma and Nell Gwyn

(if not of Pocahontas and Ben Franklin)

in a fit of noncommittal I was born.

My genealogy at best is dim.

What's it to me if Dad were Cicero ("Chickpea")?

Bliss to be alive in that refulgent dawn,

already as an infant, and evolving spawn,

I shot my favorite spores as far as I could reach:

O hemispheric mycelium, mould of the free!

From Gulf of Trump to Patagonia's freezing beach,

'shroom 'publics sprang up, from sea to shining sea,

each with its patriotic banner

and presidential particolored sash,

a vaunted history, a torrid solipsistic manner,

basting its bombastic brats with nepotistic cash.

Back of them all, inevitably, the Big Banana.

Message to be found washed up in a plastic bottle in the former Costa Rica, ca. 3,000 CE.