The Cheapskates

When History began running low on its natural resource of Newness
And its events grew tired of squandering the little novelty they possessed in the
long line toward infinity
To cut costs and take advantage of recycling opportunities
Time decided to start driving in a circle again

Before long, History’s most famous people began leaving the highway of no
return
And appeared in the neighborhood of the finite once again,
Sauntering around the chronological block
Lost beings
Who longed to find the city dump of the past
Where the no longer relevant could bask in the noble silence of the ashes

No rest for the re-usable!

I saw Julius Caesar the other day
Strolling down the sidewalk,
Past the broken down chicken coop in our decaying backyard
Knife still in his back, muttering…
“Oww! Somebody get this out of me, and me out of here.
It hurts, it really, really hurts
To be one of the undead…”

But he was too holy for us déclassé types to touch
He still wore a little of that old Caesarian glow on his noble frame
Like a warm toga…

Poor wounded World Historical Figure
Around and around he would go, transforming with each revolution
Into a cheaper version of himself:
Napoleon the class interloper, then the redneck Hitler, followed by cut-rate
populists like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot,
A polyglot of Perons, Pinochets, the Manson family, the Chaney gang, the Bin
Laden crew

But with all their connections
The books they wrote and were written about them
With all their high living, and all the glory and power of their momentary swagger
Not one of these fading copies of the tyrannical ideal
Had anything of use to tell any of us plebeians
Newly minted in our own bargain basement version of immortality
We, who would soon begin our own circular journeys through slums of eternity

Except that, as Caesar said:
“It hurts, it really, really hurts,
To be one of the undead”