Also Lucrezia Borgia (Revised) Poem by Margaret Alice Second

Little by little, incrementally, I’m dying while trying to
translate this nonsensical text written for little grey
people without any reference to aesthetics or meaning
or inherent value or reason or excitement or adventure
or enlightenment of the reader

I’m serving imprisonment for eons of sin; in a previous
existence I must have been Genghis Khan, I probably
slaughtered untold numbers of holy women and men –
only this can justify the painful moments with these
texts which will lead to my receiving a zero –

Or minus on my assessment, my head is swollen to ten
times its size in an attempt to retain meanings of terms
used over and over, but all in vain, I am meant to suffer
and empty the cup to the last bitter drop, I must have
incurred wrath of the gods in several reincarnations –

As Lucrezia Borgia maybe, poisoning family members
and political opponents and killing for fun, perhaps even
Torquemada himself, who burnt innocent old women as
witches under the Spanish Inquisition in order to take
their possessions for himself

Whoever I was before this life, I’ve incurred wrath of all
the gods in all the pantheons and now must suffer untold
episodes of blackouts faced with super-boring texts, smoke
is darkening the Office around me, smell of burnt rubber
indicating all pistons have stopped working

Only my willpower keeps this sad contraption on the road,
which people think of as my ego, but actually is a frightened
little alien hanging from the rafters in my smouldering head
and feels ready to succumb to sudden death rather than
continuing this endless march through desolate places
in Dante’s Purgatory….