The requiem of Vermeil
Vermeil sat poised,
pondering his quotidian imbibation
of yarrow tea
served trenchantly
in a jaundiced demitasse,
dilapidated through aeons
of abusive truculence
and self-imposed objurgation,
weeping silently in his
ichor-imbrued desolation.
Corruptio optimi pessima.
A zucchetto keened haphazardly
o'er his left temporal,
purple and truncated,
seemingly contemplating
rabid xenophobia
and lost, invaluable kickshaws.
And he realized,
as if in perspicacity,
"credo quia absurdum est."
Then suddenly,
intrusively,
bursting scuttling, scuttling...
sounds itching at his wainscoting,
false mollification
tolling its matutinal gallimaufry.
Varmints...
varmints...
varmints scrabbling at his door,
yawping and yowling
Zoroastrian precepts
as if stricken with kwashiorkor.
Turgidly they danced,
gambolling disdainfully
in contumelious righteousness,
and thus sang lustily and hailed,
a terrible panegyric:
"sic semper tyrannis."
"Oh wail, wail!"
he screamed,
aching as pleurisy,
"canter to thine doggerel!
Wake!
Rise!"
Invective strangled his gorge.
"Profligate,
thou epistemological somnambulists,
tread with latent jejunosity,
as if waking should bring mortality
of the most heinous kind!
Nemo me impune lacessit!"
And determinedly,
the laggard, palteringly ineffusive witenagemot,
eugenics in quorum,
impassively proclaimed
nonchalance,
vestments billowing as welkin puffs,
through a weldment
of fusty
and impertinent
flatulence.
Absit individia.
So he continues searching,
saturnine in despair,
for that elusive nepenthe,
his once effulgent piety
and sagacious hubris
now but froward,
languid effluvium
in the corpse of his psyche...
his mind a pastiche
of sanguinary disillusionment
and ululating blandishment,
banished to pompous urbanity
in a funumbrial abyss
of hagiographical frippery.
Deus vult...
fiat justitia, ruat caelum.
Non omnis moriar.
-----
By John G. Wright, January 12, 1995
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