Christening
From a window in the wall
The conveyor belt rolled
the newborns
Through a spray wash
Simultaneously disinfecting
and baptizing them
Though some would argue
that intention and immersion
Were necessary for the sake
of efficaciousness
Those lab coated and self
appointed experts
Checked the babies for
accuracy
Piercing heels and
assigning names
Like Fido, Shemp, Destroyer
of Worlds, What Have You
To the dulcet tones of
trombone and glockenspiel
A lurid, lurching lullaby
There was no shortage of
personal adornment among the onlookers
Who took great pleasure in
comparing their jewelry
They pronounced it
"joolury" which took some of the shine off of it for me
We stripped to our skivvies
Folded all of ourselves
into that one tiny clown car
Each of us heading away
from there in a different direction
Bob has a bit of fun with these names.
ReplyDelete"Fido" (meaning "faithful", from the Latin fidus), has long been a common, generic, name for some dog in a story.. But there was actually a famous dog with that name.In Luco di Mugello, near Florence, a brick kiln worker named Carlo Soriani foind an injured dog in a ditch and rook him home. After Fido recovered, every day he followed Soriani to the bus stop and waited for him there until he returned in the evening. This pattern continued for two years, but on December 30, 1943, the Allies bombed the area, destroying factories and killing many workers, including Soriani. Nevertheless, for the next 14 years, until the dog's death, Fido waited at the bus stop every evening. When the dog died still waiting for his master on June 9, 1958, the news received a four-column front page story in "La Nazione," and the story continued to spread worldwide. A majolica statue had already been placed in Piazza Dante in Borgo San Lorenzo, but it had been destroyed by vandals; after Fido was buried .next to Soriani a new bronze staue was erected on the same spot as the earlier one. next to the municipal palace..
Shemp was one of the original movie clowns known as the Three Stooges, along with his younger brothers Moe and Curly Howard (actually Horowitz before they changed their surname). His real name was Samuel, but in his immigrant mother's thick Litvak accent "Sam" came out "Shemp" instead.
Destroyer of Worlds is from verse 32 of chapter 11 in the Bhagavad Gita and was quoted by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer in his comment about his creation, the atomic bomb: "I am become death, destroyer of worlds."
What Have You is an American colloquialism meaning ‘anything else similar that there may be, or that one can think of’" and first appeared in the "New Yorker" magazine in 1925.
Great observations
DeleteRobert Lee Haycock is a member of your poetry Facebook Group and displays his intense talent as a poet here today: Visit & Join Contemporary Poets, Their Works, Issues, Current Poetry Projects, News, Links Join today: https://www.facebook.com/groups/807679459328998/
ReplyDeleteVery meaningful and truthful description like the way you hide between the lines and in the words you choose deep reality.
ReplyDelete