RKS Literature: The Torment of Holding Yourself In: “Trimalchio’s Feast” (Petronious)

“Excuse me, dear people, my inside has not been answering the call for several days now. The doctors are puzzled. But some pomegranate rind in water and resin in vinegar has dome me good. But I hope now it will be back in good behaviour. Otherwise my stomach rumbles like a bull. So if any of you wants to go out, there’s no need for him to be embarrassed. None of us were born to be solid. I think there’s nothing so tormenting as holding yourself in. This is one thing even God Almighty can’t object to. Yes laugh Fortunata, but you generally keep me up all night with this sort of thing.”

RKS Poetry Anthology: “Go west young man!”

Go west young man!

Gasping

Retching

Tumble rivers of foamy beer and purplish macaroni chunks

Spilling into the pavement

Steaming in the winter’s frigidity

While its stumbling moaning creator

Wends homeward to bed and

Ready to leap like a tiger upon its unprepared toilers

Tomorrow

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Poetry Anthology: “Monday (non retired version)”

Monday (non retired version)

I lie in fear

Waiting

Praying Monday morning is but an illusion

Camouflaged amongst herds of angry zebra

Who lay traps

Of joyful Fridays

To taunt its believers

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Poetry Anthology: “In the interests of productive behaviour”

In the interests of productive behaviour

Motivation

Goals

Group dynamics

Profit sharing (for a selective few)

Job enrichment

Global inclusion

Endless performance appraisals

Team building

All supposedly (by the senior management team) tasty tidbits for the rank and file

Bribery for the belligerent

Soothed with technocratic brew

Psychological trickery

Blessed in the holy catacombs of management classes

Where the ambitious Dacron polyesters

Grovel at the troughs of social mobility fed by Harvard Business School priests

Sacrosanctly selling communion to the highest bidder

Of course

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Literature: “Trimalchio’s Feast”: Trimalchio’s Wife A Magpie with a Rough Tongue! (Petronious)

“Who was the woman running around this place? ‘Trimalchio’s wife’ he told me, ‘Fortunata is her name and she counts her money by the sackful. And before, before what was she? You’ll pardon me for saying so, but you wouldn’t have touched a bit of bread from her hand. Nowadays-and who knows how or why- she’s in heaven, and she’s absolutely everything to Trimalchio. In fact, if she tells him at high noon it’s dark, he’ll believe her. He doesn’t know himself how much he’s got, he’s so loaded-but this bitch looks after everything; she’s even in places you wouldn’t think of. She’s dry, sober and full of ideas-you see all that gold-but she’s got a rough tongue and she’s a real magpie when she gets her feet up-if she doesn’t like you she doesn’t like you.”

RKS Literature: “Trimalchio’s Feast” : What’s on the Menu (Petronious)

“After our applause the next course was brought in. Actually it was not as grand as we expected, but it was so novel that everyone stared. It was a deep circular tray with the twelve signs of the Zodiac arranged around the edge. Over each of them the chef had placed some appropriate dainty suggested by the subject, Over Aires the Ram, chickpeas; over Tarus the Bull a beefsteak: over the Heavenly Twins testicles and kidneys; over Cancer the Crab, a garland; over Leo the Lion, an African fig; over Virgo the Virgin, a young sow’s udder; over Libra the Scales a balance with a cheesecake in one hand and a pastry in the other; over Scorpio, a sea scorpion, over Sagittarius the Archer, a sea bream with eyespots; over Aquarius the Water-Carrier, a goose; over Pisces the Fishes two mullets. In the centre was a piece of grassy turf bearing a honeycomb.”  

RKS Literature: Letter from Mozart to Father 3July1778, Paris: Mozart Muses on Life and Death

“I feel comforted  because I know that God, who orders everything for the best, however contrary it seems to us, wills it so; for I believe-and I won’t be persuaded otherwise-that no doctor, no individual, no misfortune, no accident can give a man his life or take it away, God alone can do that- once our time has come, all remedies are useless, they hasten death rather than prevent it”.

RKS Poetry Anthology: “Junkie of sorts”

Junkie of sorts

Up the highway flows the citrus juice

From Florida

Anita Bryant

The pusher

Scores a hit

And all are satisfied

Except the Orange Bird

Who weeps in lament

For she can’t talk

And

Is forced to sing at gunpoint

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Poetry Anthology: “Surfing the COVID Waves”

Surfing the COVID Waves

The more the COVID waves surf the beach of life

The more power and constraints placed on individual liberty

In the name of public good!

Elected representatives and top echelon medical bureaucrats now turned into sharks

Dismembering and attacking those who fail to tow the party line

Vilified like the sharks that attack the surfers like the sharks they are?

Robert K. Stephen