Raising the Ante

 “sometimes the subject is not what you think”

—Rodney Jones, “The Ante”

What's the motive of my line—

Is it a thing to do with time?

Perhaps some sort of sexual tic

("Subject wants to dip his wick")?

I scarcely give a tinker's dam.

I scribble chiefly since I can.

Pain, those urges, even rhyming?

Sure, you know, it’s wasted whining!

The subject's really what you feel,

The night, a trip that rocks, unreal:

In growing up, you should conceal

Raising the ante on your life.

Take dear Calliope for wife;

She'll cut you in since it's her deal.

Epigraph: Rodney Jones, Imaginary Logic (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), 17.

Latin subjectus . . . literally, to throw under, from sub- + jacere to throw —Merriam Webster, s.v.

Halloween 2025

The Yoberati

The yoberati formed the Paris mob

Who pronged aristos’ heads on pikes.

Such is progress: now, today,

They lacerate the world with “likes.”

Though short on liberty and fraternity

We have descended to equality—

All yobs permit themselves to snob,

And sensibility to sigh: Yikes!

October 29, 2025

The Fall of Carthage

Altogether elsewhere, vast

Herds of reindeer move across

Miles and miles of golden moss,

Silently and very fast.

—W. H. Auden, "The Fall of Rome" (1947)

Problems stirring in the south,

Records of a trading nation

Seek appropriate quotation,

Though we live from hand to mouth.

On the shelves of supermarkets

Gleaming goodies grate in aspect.

Voters trip the light fantastic,

Bound for Hades in a basket.

Politicians ignore the rules.

In the bedroom, undone muzzles,

In the kitchen, faded spices.

Ask not now the undertaker’s prices—

Best accept in time of troubles!

Writers taught in writing schools

Find it hard to place their pieces.

Herds of reindeer drop their faeces.

Famous figures in the Cloud

Do their best with what’s allowed.

“Les âmes des morts, disait-il, se résolvent dans la lune comme les cadavres dans la terre.” —Gustave Flaubert, Salammbô (1862)

Sunday, October 26, 2025