Satire for the Ides of March

The world appears wholly habited
By queer folk and politicians,
By novelists, cinematic stars, and magicians.
If I have missed anyone I apologize,
One cannot be caught up with everything
Or think of everyone that tires the eyes.

How times have changed!
Nobody normal now visits the Met.
If they do, I haven’t met them yet;
And I am sure of those that do, they don’t regret
That the times have changed.

Newspapers! what a bore they’ve become.
Once opened, one must be patient to the very end.
Take the comic strips for instance:
Doonesbury is the essence of artificial wit,
There seems to be no discernible point to it.
I would rather be found darning doilies socially
Than read this loquor-speak of buffoonery,
That marches on and on and on.

Another two hours of life are wasted
Going to movies, unless you’re young
And impressionable, and it’s questionable
What the young and impressionable know,
That lie on far-off beaches pasted?

Also in today’s news we have Clooney,
Preaching where ignorance is bliss, period.

Farrakan is again blasting “bad Jews.”
No white man would dare say Louie has a point.
We sit “smug, easy, and unmolested,”
While truth, generally, goes uncontested.

The ACLU, that miserable fringe of society,
Herds Christians to the Coliseum
With the points of their tails,
While the angry crowds sits and hates.

The teachers in the classroom are often teaching badly,
Their union leaders accept their dues, gladly.
Overpaid school administrators approve of both, sadly?
Pork butchering is still a good way of doing business.

Stern is unconscious of his unimportance
To the world; he pooh-pooh’s everyone.
The ignorant believe him a marvelous wit,
When he’s only talking ---- well, it’s not wit.

The homosexual gets his knickers in a bind
At words he believes are unkind,
Words which shatter his fancy portrait of himself
To the world without. He says they originate from kooks.
No doubt. From those that never read his unkind books.

Politicians are deep in the slough of despond,
Many of the worst among politicians anyway.
It’s easier to politicize than govern wise:
Their observations being quite limited,
What they cannot alter, they abuse.

Maeve Binchy is dining out for lunch,
The faun-gods buy her books by the bunch,
Nodding at her use of Church-abuse,
Excusing the jealousy of Caliban.

In celebrity-shooting, the first point
Is selecting a victim. If you miss, run.
Celebrities are notorious for use of the tommy gun,
Blasting this way and that way, impotens sui.

Satire is above everything a tool:
“The flight of Genius is above all rules,
Made to guide talent, and to fetter fools.”
I fear, one of the few geniuses that had true talent
Was the old bard William Shakespeare.
Cold time has crossed out their names
Who first called that fellow a fool!

The world is not what it seems.
It seems that many in it
Do not want to be anything else.
Quote the raven, “Never mind.”


Dom Giovanni



Notes:

The “Ides” in the ancient Roman calendar was the 15th of March,
May, July, and October, and the 13th day of the remaining months,
eight days after the Nones.

The “Ides of March” was the day Julius Caesar was assassinated.
It may also be a portent of one’s danger or doom, as in the case
of Julius Caesar, when he received a warning from the soothsayer
before his murder. See Plutarch, Julius Caesar.

The term “queer folk” should not be construed falsely, it is
a very old term for odd people, going way beyond the modern use
of it. That is, meaning those out of the mainstream. Today, it is
often the common practice of one side or another of many groups
and opinions in society to claim the term “mainstream” for
themselves. Either we are all in the mainstream or we are all
not. I do not expect barking dogs and solemn asses to understand.

There will never be satisfactory answers to many of the social
dilemmas which plague society that will please everyone. Do not
expect most politicians to understand. The purity of their air is
not like ordinary human air, and politicians can only confuse
matters more to their discredit than to their care. Besides, they
are vulnerable to attacks from all sides for both the right and
the wrong reasons and they fear accordingly. We should have more
respect for parlor maids.

I must apologize to magicians; many are they who are poignant
comics and entertainers in our times. Novelists, today, are a dime a dozen, they make their piles of money then are soon
forgotten.

Cinema stars should stick to entertainment and not go where
satirists fear to tread. Satire is not truly entertaining.

The line “smug, easy, and unmolested,” is quoted from Humbert
Wolfe. Lampoons, 1925. Also, “Great Britain generally
depicted as a pork butcher in a good way of business.”

My Comic perception: “miserable fringe” is dispensed freely,
reflecting the use and abuse of language in many of today’s
newspapers.

Stern aka Howard Stern, the Bacchus of Bombast.

Our Twenty-first century has become an age of mostly bad satire,
not quite like the Eighteenth century, an age where there was
much good and better satire published. Perhaps we are more
effected by our humid climate and savagery in eating.

Few writers today of any kind can confront the worn out symbolism
of modernism truthfully and wholly. Perhaps at some future time
the imaginative powers of our artists and writers will revive, but
it is doubtful that it shall be anytime soon.

March 18, 2006 / August 10, 2010