[I am becoming increasingly aware that various phases of my poetic production over the years are nearing completion (or at least exhaustion). Earlier this year, I published ‘final versions’ of 64 and Sonnets on Autism and, over the next few days or weeks I shall be publishing the ‘final versions’ of my series of Propertius ‘translations,’ along with one more light-hearted translation of an Ovid poem, making eight in total.

This week, I re-read all of Propertius’s oeuvre and concluded that I have already produced versions of all the poems that are at all amenable to my own peculiar treatment. The others are great poems also, but I am interested only in working on those in which the over-riding theme of love and sex overtly overlaps with politics.

The first of these poems, which I publish today, was originally written in 2003. Unlike most of my work, it is an explicitly political piece, protesting George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. Like many of Propertius’s poems, it is written ironically in the voice of someone who purports to support the war. Sadly, it still seems very fresh in these Trumpian times, fourteen years later.

All of these poems contain vulgar language and opinions (not my own) that may upset some people. Reader discretion is advised.]

George the Third is at war again in the filthy, rich middle

of the world to the east. Aircraft carriers

have carved up the seven already dirtied seas. Our Dear

First American Citizen is worthy of great deeds,

planning to unfurl the flag of freedom over the ends of the Earth,

bringing rivers that breastfed the first civilized

peoples and the first dictatorships

under the sway and yoke of the mid-west way of life.

Shi’a cedes to chapel and hypocrisy.

*

State-of-the-art fighters and frigates are sent out

and armed men in harm’s way

do their daily duty as drilled.

And the fact that I am even able to write this poem

is already testimony to the freedom we will win

for others and the vengeance we will do

the Manhattan dead.

*

Do your bit, boys, for our history books!

And—by the stern Puritan Lord of the Torah,

and by our mother Mary of candles and limpid eyes—

I pray I see, before I burn myself out,

the oil flowing back along the highways of righteousness

into our limousines and SUVs;

proven weapons programs laid to rest

by wild captives

broken in by interrogation;

and fanatics in turbans and skirts put away

forever in the penitentiary system,

or simply put to death; old allies

making the right noises of obedience

as we march them up to press-conferences

in the Rose Garden after tea to atone.

*

And I’ll be there to watch and applaud,

with a girl’s breasts resting against me,

as we read  the names of the dead off

the black stones and the names of the cities overthrown

from the sofa on CNN.

*

For we know

that the most important right bequeathed us

by the Founding Fathers, and the movie starlets

and the heroes of war, is the right to fuck.

*

The oil-wealth goes (rightly) to those

who wheedled and fought for it. And we, in turn,

get the right to pop-corn and a pair of tits,

and to line the Sacred Way from White House

to Congress, and to sing the praises

(we the bigoted and the obese)

of our leaders and our heroes,

and happy (under the comfort of a heavy police presence)

laud our holy way of life.