Dennis Villelmi writes

"Minutes"

-Flash!
Like gladiatorial steel in observance of an ionized Caesar
   returned from the East in our age of after Trinity.
The last minutes of Pompeii have been handed down to us now;
Gray Vespasian mushrooms as rival to the sun:
   on both horizons, his likeness.

-Bravo!
To Moscow; to Pyongyang; Beijing and NATO:
   your tridents, nets, and shields long on display,
How they herald the last minutes in this, our Nuclear Vesuvius.
In those last minutes we watched you salute "Caesar"
   before you kicked up the dust and DNA;

-Flashes!
Of news, the headlines half-broadcast, calling us to the
   Atomic Colosseum for the final minutes of Bikini Revisited.
"The Lucky Dragon, and the Five Suns Fished With Fission,"
That was the name of the spectacle, and it was an oblique rematch
    between Hercules and igneous Eternity.

-Eternity!
-Trinity!
The civil minutes have given way to gathering our children
    into the residual temples of the morrow.

Where we march cottonmouthed, the marrow of our bones begins
The psalms of lament; half-blinded we are to the Advent of Nero's Rain.

Bravo!
We have become Los Alamos;
    like the minutes before the world fell, we now
Count ourselves away. 

Mushroom Cloud -- Jeff Ensminger

Dennis Villelmi writes

"This- "

This, a donation I would presume, from the world's
 Best charlatans-
   The image of an undriven highway burned into the
One wall without a window;
   How long has this room held me now? 
From the two lancets there's the broken view of the
Church garden; the oriel sweeps the south side of the city.
Both I've rendered in watercolors numerous times,
And always bequeathed them to the priests come and gone.
Long have I played this-
   The kept embarrassment; the staid devil of an unflowing Acheron.
Perhaps it's the interminable scent of ecclesiastical
Candle wax that's got the Moon coming to see me again,
Like some refugee from the original bedlam in heaven,
Stealing into the ribcage of a slain Titan.
This nectarous bouquet, and with it the memories of my
Father's woe-
   How he'd counted on his Lord not to give me a twin in madness.
Mother had succumbed to the highway. 
She'd sacrificed an entire cabinet of fine china to it, the shards 
Still there on the carpet when she was taken for care.
She later blamed a Visitation from the attic; I now blame
This same house of God she sought refuge in -
   For us two.
Forever and ever the Attic Man, I have only that road to
Travel by mine eyes alone; I'd like to at last gouge them out.
The priests, I know, gift it to me for my "confessions," but it's
 That I may sift within for other sins, like a hunt for
Adam and Lilith before the next newborns of the city are-
   Visited.
Priests and little bones are all I've known, and they keep me
On the highway;
Undriven, unflowing -this-  the loitering Worm at whose crown
The madness mates with Heaven.
The church garden has been painted still brighter this morn;
   That happens there with each newborn's burial. 

 
The Garden of Earthly Delights -- Hieronymus Bosch

Dennis Villelmi writes

"No, To Poor Caesars"

The dusky crunch hour, 
and, oh my laughing Christ,
The likenesses of you I have smashed in my
Byzantine minutes!
Eyes closed: Push, push! Onward to unwelcome reflections.
At the proverbial center of gravity,
(call it the facsimile of Jerusalem)
Sleep is fitful. 
The matriarch again has her invitation,
Which means another inventory of losses.
I awake with the gods Constantine banished;
Mine is a struggle for the forbidden.
Is the saint's annual procession today?
Will Persia merge with it today?
Is today when Asia will uncross her legs?
It's believed that deities commonly disappear East;
Might explain its call to Alexander,
And later Caracalla: the Great Wanna Be.
Yes - the procession begins; the saint's relics are there
For reflection.
The West is a relic, and hence I've not rested.
Stepping off a mutilated icon, I proceed East,
Where Sleep must've accepted an invitation. 
 
 statues of  Roman emperors, Bath, England -- George Anderson Lawson