15: GLITTER

B. R. Dionysius: Caligula's Barges

All pleasure is bitter ash.

His least known extravagances lay sunken.

For a thousand years, fish attached soft eggs

to gold trim decks, womb-grey walls harboured

young generations, black-striped, brown

chequered juveniles strode gangways, beat up

on interspecies rivalries; evolution’s fascism.

The next emperor wanted some of this too.

Drained lakes of blood to get the real thing;

Caligula’s pleasure barges, hulls sundered

his excesses housed in concrete bunkers.

The other prince (darker one) having

lost his fun with things Italian; burned them.

The SS unimpressed; seahorse as senator.

B. R. Dionysius directed the Subverse: Queensland Poetry Festival from 1997-2001 and is currently the Assistant Editor of papertiger: new world poetry. In 1998 he was awarded the Harri Jones Memorial Prize for Poetry by the University of Newcastle. He is the author of two poetry collections, Fatherlands (Five Islands Press, 2000) and Bacchanalia (Interactive Press, 2002). He won the inaugural IP Picks 2002 Awards and was short-listed in the 2002 Mary Gilmore Poetry Prize. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.