Critical Switch

by Richard Tyrone Jones

Wednesday 15th April 2009 11:54 pm (first posted 1st September 2009)

This month's poem was chosen by Rachel Pantechnicon, who says of it, "There aren’t enough poems about Romans at the moment, so here’s one. People say that Romans aren’t relevant, but do we not all cross our own personal Rubicon several times a day? I know I do. Anyway, this is the best Roman poem since John Hegley’s one that begins ‘A Roman centurion soldier...’ and it’s also the only poem ever written with the word ‘senescence’ in. Many people on the poetry circuit think that Richard Tyrone Jones is just a big ginger moptop who likes shouting, but this poem reveals another side to him:  an altogether more cerebral big ginger moptop. I mean - just look at those nonchalantly self-assured rhymes; and that ‘eagled’/’eager’ thing. In fact, I’d say that RTJ - the host of fun-to-be-at London night Utter! - simply oozes nonchalant self-assurance wherever he goes. And gaudeamus igitur, say I."

Find out more about Richard and his work at http://www.writeoutloud.net/poets/richardtyronejones

Critical Switch

Domitian, A.D.73

I have dismissed the slaves. There shall be present
but six. My wife, myself, a mute midwife,
a doctor on the cusp of senescence,
my heir, and the child who will adopt his life.

For court boils toward the point of eruption
hemlock grows in each Uncle’s eyes,
eagled generals, eager for adoption
hide daggers in every cup of wine.

Thus night’s purple shift will lift on a safe home
where he’ll grow to tend goats, a Sabine peon,
turn fireman in some dank suburb of Rome
or stevedore in Herculaneum;

but I shall never know, nor see my son
lest he return, revenge what we have done.