Nova Caligula: Idyll of the King

Nova Caligula wished a single head

to embody all the people, his subjects,

that he might behead the empire

at one stroke of his mighty blade.

There are many worlds to behold!

Do not hold Empire in unsanctified

reverence, for war is an unquenchable fire

burning across all lands and dominions.

Nova Caligula rose to power

seeking the uniform destruction

of his people, who stood aside,

waiting to obey the word of his will.

God and Stars have powers coveted by men.

To harness the energy of the whole civilization,

his engineers and technologists improved devices,

remote control from the imperial world throne.

With electrodes at critical anatomical parts,

each one a gemstone symbolizing authority,

Diamond and Ruby, Sapphire at fingertip control,

“My thought be your thoughts” he bade them.

His colonies formed a network, a single head,

and all his dominions bowed to its law

by which he kept the people enslaved,

blinded to their ultimate confusion.

It is well said now as a century ago

no foreign invader may by force of arms

drink water of the rivers in that land.

Destruction, if it be the nation’s lot,

must come from within. Technology

grew rich and strong in diversity

with its great new powers and capabilities

left here to blend in prosperous harmony.

The germ of infected cancerous decay

now threatens to wrack the day.

Woe to all Nations in all of the Earth!

Too late is the tide of resistance.

For now the people are divided and conquered,

numbered, bought and sold, no one knows,

save Nova Caligula, terrible master

of the infidebulum—who brings death

to all who oppose his unequivocal rule.

The storm winds and moon-driven tides

bring destruction to the doors of justice

like an underground river flows to the sea.

Nova Caligula alone holds the dreadful key

to the ancient vaults in the dungeon of torment

and the deep sepulchre at the well’s bottom,

the prison-tower where secret murder is locked.

The minister of finance, a judge of the Law

and a general commander of the Army

conspired to overrule in blunt authority,

but horrible was the wrath of Nova Caligula.

The hum of a well-oiled machine,

the harmony of a well-protected regime

was broken with harsh disagreement of war

and the distant clamor of death’s drums.

Here is the land of the Sun god King

out across the horizontal frontier!

Beneath these sands lies treasure buried,

fantastic monuments towering high above.

The neophytes burned devotional candles there

and the prayers rose like incense in the air,

the young virgins dancing eurythmically—

all the flame and pageantry of roses.

Into the clouds of genocide,

here a man will rape and slaughter;

he has killed his beautiful daughter.

His own beautiful daughter

lies raped and slaughtered, his son

assassinated, being politically insane;

yet in all this there is something to gain—

somehow a chance to rearrange?

Learn to discern with your true perceptions

and with confusion dispelled, learn anew,

or staple your hands to elementary desks

and lay down all hope, when stopping here.

Nova Caligula gives his children drugs

to relieve the intensity of their delusions,

and hallucinations induced of their illusions,

the constant liturgy of network programming.

O Holy mother of sorrows and mercy,

painful was the death of your son

who was slain in maintenance of that estate

whose God is force, unchallenged authority.

On the eleventh hour network program,

there was a young child who had forgotten

the very real violence of his father’s gun,

accidentally killing a smaller brother.

The other children gathered at the scene

some on bicycles, one of the boys kicks

the fallen martyr to verify death;

“Do not touch the carrion with your hands.”

A mother scolded her too-young son

who had found a dead bird lying

in the open street turned over by a stick

only to reveal worms gnawing underneath.

Discontented madman execute judgments

In the shade of large rocks like reptiles

poised for action. Insectine specimens

are the network of soldiers of Nova Caligula.

Like a pestilential plague devours fields,

his corps covered the entire land,

an army of deadly insinuation and vice.

The disease is terminal; there is no resistance.

The ruin of mythical national integrity

is betrayed by the pervasive stench

of corpses rotting in the doorway,

open murder in the bleakness of Sun.

Nova Caligula turned his gaze away

from his sodium morphate assassins,

conspirators of heroin and cocaine,

all vices, gamblers and prostitutes.

Flee the lost lonely forgotten dream,

come away by car down river road

to hidden magic in new sunlight East,

facing the hills to the south.

Proclaiming eloquent indifference,

ministers of opposition have no mouth,

neither does the river of life, whose

compelling current turns the tide of destiny.

Lose all thought of resistance

in base abstraction and pure sanity;

aware of such dangerous wisdom,

exist not in fear but oblivion.

The Sun arose over the city of Profanity

and from the sixth floor window

I beheld the dawn a changed man,

exiled in this vast expanse of space and time.

On January 18^th the prisoner was released;

not able to think but only to feel,

Nova Caligula gave him drugs to fulfill desire

and he laid down all hope.

We have been eloquent in our ignorance

laughing in derision, what to do now?

We have lost our souls, sinful creatures at best

with our love turned dishonest and hateful.

Who is that enemy who attacks love itself?

Even as the Spring came in with fire,

consciousness is now accursed, intelligence

to be death with silently, and silently extinguished.

To shine the light of reason and ideas,

is to attract an inevitable retribution

with consequent punishment a certainty,

indifference and apathy the bastions of Tyranny.

Blue moon crooned soft through Junior’s radio

as the young men cruised off into the night.

Some people were nearly struck by their automobile

as they careened smoothly from side to side.

The engine maintained a deep homogenous purr

which was true excellence to the ear,

drowning out all background radiation

and the continuous bombardment of jet-lag.

Highway 666 in bright sunlight…

the car approached the great desert heat.

Get out and start walking

across the burning desert sands.

With no water, but shoes on his feet

he set out to seek a New Land

which he knew must lie beyond

the deadly expanse he now faced.

The prisoner walked straight into the desert;

the wretched police-guardians of fear

were present to witness the advent of exile,

overruling in blunt authority and enforcement.

All this was willed by Nova Caligula,

so his power would go unrivalled and strong;

he destroyed his enemies, and al those

who would rejoice in his failure.

All those with senses to perceive reality

believed they had struck Hell on Earth,

and established the rule of Evil,

so great was the suffering of the oppressed.

“O sacred virgin, innocence unstained,

behold the city of your temple lies in ruin.

Go before the people, herald renewed life

by presenting another son of tyranny.

He shall appear to them in the flesh;

death resurrected comes to redeem his people

who even now cower in Lost Paradise

awaiting the furious scourge of ages

which shall pour down from Heaven.

Our thunderous King hath opened his eyes

and poured down the light of glory

on the far land of new direction

which even now wallows in confusion,

lingering in doubt with life in danger.

The government of iron will and treachery

awaiting the cup of justice, poisoned.”

For such words we say to defend our ways.

“Can such corruption endlessly flourish on earth?

No, we say God must right our injustice

and the eternal triumph in ultimate victory.”

From the watchtower of the Apocalypse

Nova Caligula laughed and gave to them

more and more diverse religions to divert

the vengeance of their righteous indignation.

The dead will hear of my complaint

as I must deliver my ancient apology

for we must someday meet again…

God may acquit our audacious guilt

of what is deemed ill by tortured people

who must victimize others…where’s a chance

to cast away social good fortune, and reassume

the body of the wind? Who will among you?

Office of the Registrar-tentative Study list—

Fill-out Eng133ABCMar151973form R-104

(Rev.3/71) U19894-880 Last, First, Middle

Not valid without dated stamp of cashier

to record and testify damage to the extent

of classes being called off for today.

About 75 teen-agers playing basketball dodged

flying glass and falling building materials.

PS73-252/22m/1-73. This map shows how

the United States and Canada are divided into

telephone areas—each with its own Area Code.

Le tour du monde en 1.5 minutes. Tuition

$208.50—tell me some truth or I’ll leave you

but you’re a monster to get away from.

Move away there—now out of the way!

Move, look out! You’ll be killed if you stay.

Haldeman called essential Witness…

Weiker says competition to do ‘dirtiest’ deed

led to (ask who) sales of meat dropping off

as week-long boycott begins…

Faces on Telegraph at College,

winter fog across the water,

reluctant wind at 3 in the afternoon,

coffee waged and won unceasingly.

Cigarette smoked and beer drunk,

country radio at 55 miles per hour—

return. Remember how hands touched—

bank loan applications in Eden.

Wayne at the union, home to indecision.

Network: “6,500 cheer, as last planeload

of POWs Lands. Travis Crowd Welcomes

War’s final contingent On Return to Mainland.”

“Last known POW feared a trick,

feared a trick to the very end,

2 die, Damage Widespread, as

60 M.P.H. Winds Hit Southland.”

“Look not for gardens at the Gate

of Heaven,” spoke a voice somewhere

behind, as if leaving one’s childhood.

To relieve doldrums of deadly time—

to hear music played, to appreciate,

to enjoy, to take flight from evil, boredom,

to take flight on a local jet, altitude 30,000 feet;

600 miles per hour in the universal labyrinth.

The burning fuse on Reality;

even now threatens the distant battlefield

which flows with blood under city streets

of thunderous uncontrolled agony.

Ministers of Death have decreed our

annihilation in criminal misuse of power.

Innocent victims fall slaughtered, oppressed

when weight of rule collapses social order.

Apocalypse cracks doom, the battle engaged.

Warrior Nation governs tides of disaster.

Our liberty, freedom turned worse than lies

for behold, bold murder in government.

Under layers of bureaucratic barnacles,

turn keys in locks to find boulders,

stones, rocks in the moss-green shade,

worms gnawing the underbelly of carrion.

9 to 5 humanity, who removes Presidents

save our dawn or waste reward…

Eternity sleeps in voluntary oblivion,

a mystery never revealed. Price, 25 cents.