Dave Morrison
Aug 22, 2017 · 2 min read

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?

Resistance Poetry

Verse as Commentary

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