
Our Original Purpose
So there’s this Roman
Emperor, I forget his name, and he’s done
pretty well for himself
but he’s getting old, and the shine is
off him, and he knows that nothing gets people’s
attention like a war.
He says “those Caledonians are a bunch of
wild men, and until we defeat them we’ll never really
be safe.” It didn’t matter that these Caledonians
were in the Scottish Highlands and
didn’t give a boar’s ass about Rome.
Still.
So he moves his whole operation to
York, England, and he gets his toughest boys from
all over, and they start burning Caledonian villages and
killing everything that moves.
Now, the Roman have the numbers, and the
technology — they are the Super Power. Of course,
the pissed-off Caledonian in the bushes with the club
could care less. These fancy pigs have killed his
family, and they’re going to pay.
And they do.
It turns out that stealth and ambush and bitterness and
home-field advantage work pretty well
against a Super Power.
I was going to call this poem Humans Don’t Learn
Shit From History, but I didn’t want to be vulgar.
I wonder if
God looks down
and bangs his fist on his
forehead and mutters,
“come on!”, or
if this is all actually
fine, as our original
purpose is to supply the
earth with
much-needed
fertilizer?

