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For Rome Alone

David J. Thompson

Duty bound, my ass. I knew
that bastard Aeneas was up to no good
the moment he showed up here
in Carthage. Sure, he was good looking
like some kind of God, sexy like Elvis
and vulnerable like James Dean, and
I’ll admit we were all crying after he told us
about how those Greek shitheads tricked
the noble Trojans with that fucking horse,
then killed his family and burned Troy
all the way to the ground. I guess
poor Dido never really had a chance.

And if that wasn’t enough, sure as hell
the damn gods conspired to get them alone
together in a cave safe from a thunderstorm.
I’m afraid there was more than staying dry
going on in there. They came out looking
like a pair of horny teenagers yanked
from the backseat of daddy’s Buick
at the drive-in theater. The next thing
you know, they’re seen all over town
more glamorous than Liz Taylor
and Dick Burton; the tabloids even say
they’re engaged, the future looks great.

But we should have known this wasn’t meant
for a one-horse town like Carthage.
No, the gods, conniving bastards that they are,
intended that for Rome alone. The next thing
you know, that sneaky ass Mercury was seen
down among the ships talking to Aeneas,
then the whole Trojan fleet sails off in the dark,
and who’s left holding the bag? It’s too much
for poor Dido, she just can’t take that kind
of chickenshit rejection; so, poor kid,
she climbs all the way to the top of the pyre,
stabs herself with Aeneas’s own special sword,
and even all us dumbasses here who didn’t see
this coming, don’t have to wait a few thousand years
for Sigmund Freud to tell us just what the hell that means.

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