A Rome, By Any Other Name

we are lucky, Runt, to have been alive during the
American blip to have taken
a piss in this
post-Cambrian lava drip

we are in the center of the patriotic rock oyster
now: Philadelphia, the initial
irritant beginning: a
Rome on top of a Rome on top of a Rome

which is only a name, and not a
truth, merely a word we have
used, like: Bald
Man, like Bald Eagle, like bald-faced lie

and though our story will be Food for Worms (like us, like
everything else) the work shall not be wholly
lost: it will … appear once
more, In a new & more perfect Edition*

*Excerpt taken from the epitaph Benjamin Franklin wrote for himself in 1728 when he was 22. Actual epitaph, as specified in his will: “Benjamin and Deborah Franklin 1790”