Toiling for Cicadas
(in the English "Hexameter" verse style)

“A whore and cuckold, Helen and King Menelaus,”
Professor Bloom wrote* that to them we could reduce
“the Matter of the Trojan War.” Like Dave Petraeus
whose mistress and biographer him could seduce;
whose “wars” will surely lead the ages to portray us
as fools: the only “generals” we can produce.

So, Puritans or Decadents, each self-indulgent,
these public figures (Shakespeare’s day and ours) partake
of power, all with bland hypocrisy refulgent,
whose names, whenever mentioned, make Forever quake.

In Homer’s Illiad ten years of battle squandered
the lives of Greeks and Trojans in a bloody fount.
In our time we’ve fantastic sums of money laundered
through schemes and lies piled so high none them can surmount,
while lustfully around the Globe we’ve flown and wandered
to drain lands of their Life like Dracula (The Count).

Shakespeare, as well, has placed on stage this tawdry drama.
In Troilus and Cressida, Trojans both at first,
we see the timeless tale of love becoming trauma.
Enough for Irony to satisfy its thirst?
Or do we, having seen a President Obama,
ask: What’s the point of “hope”? From you, it just means “cursed.”

As Chorus or as Prologue now I wish to tell you
how seven decades plus of life I got to see.
And if what war I witnessed had instead befell you
you’d know that very little of that had to be.
So have a care to see through what they try to sell you,
those salesmen of the sleaze that all of them agree
to call “a threat” from Russia, China, or Iran,
or any country doing what it wants and can.

Agree or criticize as is your inclination.
A thoughtful nod will be a hopeful indication.

*Note: Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: the Invention of the Human, p.328