REINCARNATION BLUES
I got the reincarnation blues.
I can't remember whose body or mind
I inhabited in the life behind
this one and its cacophonous moves.
Although a connoisseur of births,
I didn't always get my wish.
Once I was an introverted dinosaur,
preferring plants to flesh,
but twice I was a rough beast,
unmoveable at my ferocious feast,
gnawing the greatest and the least
with equal savoir fair until I slouched
from Bethlehem to London and Berlin
and then the repetition ceased.
I must've been humbly pelagic,
a baby shark or full-grown
barracuda, but first a sturgeon,
a catfish, a trout. With fish,
identities are continually submergin'.
Although the odds aren't in my favor,
my belief will never waver --
I was the iceberg that sank
the Titanic. Theoretically,
I could've been the flea
initiating the Black Plague,
but when you're that small,
details get inexplicably vague.
My Pharonic wife resembled nothing
so much as a praying mantis.
I've been luckier with my latest --
she'd once been a vestal princess
in Atlantis; and I believed her,
unlike so many transfixed souls
embracing each other on the Brother
and Sisterhood tours, whose letters
often conclude: "Consanguineously yours."
As for collective ancestors,
I dimly recollect a tribe
who bribed their insolent gods
to let them roast forbidden pig.
At least I was a warrior lord
and never had to beg. In Africa
I founded a Platonic utopia.
From my wisdom there flowed
a cornucopia of enlightenment.
The millions who refused my rule
succumbed to mystical myopia.
Witnesses? Reliable ones
are difficult to obtain.
Subpoenas in eternity
spin down a pristine drain.
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