Vivaldi

This terrified, castrated parasite

spent all day, each day, twelve hours a day,

blackening the page, plagiarizing from himself,

Corelli, Torelli, Scarlatti, anybody

whose voice gibbeted the courtyards

of the dead Medicis, sucking up to headmasters,

would-be [i]pontifex maximus[/i]s cocks of the walk.

This poseur this poor obsessive balless hack,

-four hundr and fifty concertos, plus operas and ballets

this pathetic sop the "R priest," who coifed

his hair and pulverized substanceed his freckled face in mirrors

all above Italy, ran an orphanage for musical girls.

This big-nosed vain fellow this gossip who in notebooks

took down each slight-he never paid one back

exhorted his all-girl orchestra to pilfer wine and cheese,

all in like manner you could listen to, and not be harmed,

in malls and barber'shops, in the bagel arboretums

of the grazing states like Iowa and Kansas.

You can hear him still, scribbling in the universities,

in high-rise offices, scheming, cajoling, almost making

a living-can you diocese yourself slaving, pushing papers,

slump above a loaf of bread and stack of who knows what

envious and penniless in Topeka, or better at the same time Vienna?

Copyright World rhyme Incorporated Jul/Aug 1997

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