LPiA Nov22

[Tiger the Lion]

Let's Pretend it's April - Nov. 22

Rules: Write a poem for LPiA on the topic or form described. Each poem should appear as a separate reply to this thread. The goal is to, at the end of the month have written 30 poems for the month of November. 


Topic : Write a poem about or inspired by an assassination. 
Form : Any
Line requirements: Eight or more

Feel free to reply with comments or kudos as you wish. 

Questions?

[RiverNotch]

Before the glory days of Nero
and the lighting of the streets of Rome
with the burning bodies of Christians, Agrippina
(Nero's mother) divinized
his predecessor Claudius with a plate of mushrooms,
though the older man had already been declared a god
in Britain a few years ago. In Britain,
more than a thousand years later, came King Henry
who preceded the Anarchy with his death
over a surfeit of lampreys. Some sort of anarchy preceded
the crowd that shot, beat, hanged, and ate the livers
of Johan De Witt and his brother Cornelis. Reszo Kasztner,
who some people claim sold his soul
to the devil, leading about 450,000 Jews
to Auschwitz for the sake
of a chosen 1,600: all that happened to him
was get shot. The same happened to Kennedy,
McKinley, Garfield, and the Great Emancipator
Lincoln. Assassins, like their victims,
sure have lost their glamor.

[TranquillityBase]

Assassination Menu, December 1916

Tea and cakes laced with cyanide
Madeira wine, also poisoned
an invitation to prayer
two bullets to the chest.
Resurrection and
one more bullet to the head.
A bath for the corpse in the icy waters
of the Malaya Nevka.
Contrary to rumor,  genitals intact.
Buried, then dug up in 1917
and burned by the Bolsheviks,
ashes dumped, no one knows where.

[Mark A Becker]

Black Friday

I was sitting in Miss Willoughby’s 4th grade class
at Loch Lomond elementary when she burst into the room
wheeling a large black and white TV on a clunky stand
saying something went wrong with our President.

After fiddling with the rabbit ears she finally
found Cronkite.  The class went dead silent
as he informed us that Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.

I remember turning to a buddy, and saying that
it was probably only in the arm or leg, and that Kennedy
was tough.  After all, he survived having the PT-109
cut in half, and Jimmy Dean even made a 45 record about it.

Cronkite froze us in our chairs when he announced,
“from Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official,
President Kennedy died at 1pm Central Standard Time…”
No one spoke. A few of the girls started to cry-
Miss Willoughby, too. 

The shaky voice of the principal came over the loudspeaker,
on the wall, near the clock. Classes were dismissed. 
Getting out of school early would normally cause wild cheering,
but I could only hear papers rustling, and shoes shuffling
toward the door, and out into that November day,
that suddenly very black Friday.

[dukealien]

Perfect Crime


Steelworker turned socialist
then Emma Goldman anarchist
disturbed by “malefactors of great wealth”
pretended he desired to shake
the president’s hand
but shot him in the belly
instead.

Seized at the scene
saved from crowd’s instant justice
quickly tried, electrocuted, pleas
of insanity denied by all
including Leon himself.
And Teddy Roosevelt, who hated
“malefactors of great wealth”
succeeded.

[CRNDLSM]

If I was the president,
I'd endorse Monroe's doctrine-
Invade our border countries-
Make Vegas our capital-
And why shouldn't I?
I have a master's degree
I've served the military
I know some things about things.

[busker]

‘Twas ten days short
of the Ides of March
in 1953.
God was in his heaven -
a tea shop in Devon -
(where vacationing, Ms Parche
said “I’ll no longer abort
like a non Aryan punter
but name my next child Gunter)
the unsmiling Smiley,
nicknamed “the Great Red Hunter”.

As he stirred Darjeeling’s finest,
musing on the commie spy nest
they’d recently uncovered -
damn that Kim Philby -
his mind moved to other
matters, such as the Tsarist dynast -
fierce, like the Franks
they’d recruited to their ranks.
A plot he’d hatched to smother,
like a stealthy alligator
the last living great dictator
was in motion on the continent.

In Moscow, old Lavrentiy
sat on a giant pillow
like an unsexy Sarah Palin
atop the face of Stalin
and listed his dacha on Zillow
(for this was happening, reader,
in a parallel universe.)

At ten o’clock the doctor
declared that the sight had shocked her -
seeing Lavrentiy Beria
first flayed, then boiled alive
then dunked in a bowl of Chili
for Joseph Dugashvilli
to savour, with sprinkled chives.

For this was a parallel universe -
not better nor worse -
just a different place,
where Anne Franke’s fifty five.