Lincoln Reviews the Prospects for Peace (Pace Appomattox), and: Julius Caesar's Report on His Assassination, and: Nat Turner Talks (1831)

Lincoln Reviews the Prospects for Peace (Pace Appomattox)

Aprilis cometh—unanimous melt-water streamingunder the capital's bridgesreaming Washington's ravines—

following the horrible, endless January—those two faces glancing backward and forwardat Hell—the tornado chiaroscuro that is War—

contention of lead, steel, iron, fire—and damnation of the flesh—its bleeding ruination.I so do want to savour

orchards trembling under rain water.So many good people have perisheddue to good aimand good metal of adversaries.

Battlefields' muddy soils—churned, baptized, by piss, blood, tears—host Union bodies,I'd like cast in gold.

Every corpse has a face like beaten earthor pressed-down snow.Maggots soon gorgeon these abandoned lilies.

(The insect worms clutch and cling and cleanse,until bones show as radiant incantation.)The Constitution is, in truth,a whites-only song,

the spurts of breathof our Union boys, plus the answering Southern shouting.The road to Appomattox

was a cloud of iron—flame spurt, blood spurt.Earthworms cut the dead—painlessly—

to pieces.Lee came at me—on behalf of Davis—a lot of frisky galloping

plus black-soil massacres,totting up to 500,000.Each Virginia field—after the crimson binge—

floods wholly violet.The dead know verminous caresses:Flies gobbling up the gore.In War, a victor can't be sluggish

at Slaughter.His Conscience is his molars.(Ignore the butter-mouth preachingof men who've never been hunted.)

A martial president couples Crueltyand Theology:A just God desecrates our enemies.I know these truths—

resonant in routine Lucidity—after verified, massive die-offs.Damn! Even Gettysburg is nowa battalion of flowers,

after the wine-red bleatingof the bayonet-defeated,their salutations to mosquitoes;after the junkyard-dog ferocity

of contending "cousins". …Magnolia offers a serene stink.I look out over cratered fields—still as sunny as America—

and I spy, finally liberated,a rustic, imitation Africa—a flourish of melaninamong unspoiled dew.

I hear the Negroes—each brazen throat—the puce cackles that stir us all.Their "spirituals" sound romanceros—

the anthems of a peoplepoorly suited to Caution,who have Liberty mixed with their blood.Bullets no longer flute from guns.

I'm the big-shot blanco—no toothless Head-of-State—who made the South undertakea gross inventory of corpses

under a falling roof of crows.Bronze statues and cannon broodon this fire-shattered Republic;yet, I feel Mozart-exuberant.

True: I dreamt recentlyI was a lamentable cadaverin an amenable coffin.But no Butchery is decorous.

[Frankfurt (Germany) 26 juin mmxiii]

Julius Caesar's Report on His Assassination

The swords were mirrors—metallic light:

I saw my own mouth gaping,in bas-relief on his rapier,as that bastard senator,Marcus Brutus

(whose mama I'd sacked severally),

slammed home the steel,so I had a dildo sprouting from my mouth:

I went from conqueror of Gaulto cocksucker,a blade stuck in my gueule.

My screams, heard as groansas I drooped, a mummy in a toga,

blades branching from my body,then snapping free.

Each fetid-breath motherfucker—fat cows with medallions—these sows who'd eat their own litters—whacked me with swords like fence posts.

Each had to excavate the hilt even.I felt a rat take bites out my crotch.

As I lay dying, panting, a poetshowered me with his "applause"—a urine homage:Piss beat taps 'gainst my cheeks.

(Strike this offense from the histories!Omit that poet:That's far worse a fate for his Reputationthan his "radical" piddling.)

Too easy is it to take statues prisoner.That was me.The Senate's unpeeled tongues,pealing "Democracy,"

had no due process for me.An epidemic of razors rapedmy epidermis, literally—unto most grisly Climax.

I seemed defective and unmanly,a toy for ambassadors;my unparalleled teethwere as good as kicked out.

I felt as feeble...