Caesar’s Wife

Despite himself, any memory eternal
was owing to Pompeia’s fifteen minutes.
Not the cakewalk he’d hoped for, at all.

Come the end a politically expedient, barren,
second rate, second choice wife carried away a
small prize - her progeny; at Caesar’s expense.

Factory Stack

Fresh, diaphanous, overblown grey mushroom steam
is upstaged by a heavy mob: a puffed-up, blew-in late
last night from the west, swollen-with menace, gang.

Massed, black-bruised, heavy with import, storm clouds.