Poem: "When of Rome"
This poem came out of the February 5, 2013 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from thesilentpoet about her series 64-squared, so we traded: I'm posting this in exchange for her posting "Lost Jews."
When of Rome
Do as the Romans do:
this has been his motto
for many lifetimes.
This is where it all began --
the Immortality and the Walking,
the men and women he has mentored --
a Roman general with a subtle spark
of something extraordinary.
In those days,
they said that such men
had been touched by the gods.
It was as much an expression of sympathy
as admiration.
His favorite color is red,
and has been from the beginning;
he can still remember what it was like
to see the cloaks of the soldiers
snapping in the wind before battle.
He calls himself Gilbert Rome,
which is not the name he was born with,
but still pays homage to that face
and that place and that time.
He is no timeless monument, though,
no unchanging statue of a man.
Vodka and club soda is his favorite drink now,
with a splash of lime, and that's something
he never knew in the old Empire.
He enjoys listening to the Blues --
he's met all the greats,
Bessie Smith and Muddy Waters,
Billie Holiday and Stevie Ray Vaughan --
oh, they know how to sing about pain.
He understands that one secret
to living a long life without going insane is
the importance of picking things up and putting them down.
Metalworking relaxes him, and he's been
a Blacksmith many times over the years.
Not all of the years, just some of them.
He is, like Lior, a Walker
although he stopped walking long ago.
He hopes that some day he will be able
to hand over the company to her.
Miranda is his surrogate-daughter,
and Immortal as well,
though he knows better than to trust her.
He cares about her anyhow.
He has multiple degrees,
but his true love has always been history.
He has lived so much of it himself,
after all: how could he not?
He's tired of watching the world go past
like a drunk stumbling down the same path,
never learning from the lessons bought with blood,
never looking ahead to avoid stepping into the same trap.
He's tired of talking to students who don't listen,
who think that old books and old men
have nothing useful to say.
If only they knew.
Sure, some people think he's crazy
or evil or just a manipulative old goat,
but you don't get to be Immortal
without somebody thinking such things.
They're mostly wrong.
More days than not, he's just tired.