Piotr Florczyk

People’s Overture

                Arise, children—get dressed
and eat your toast with gooseberry jam—
                before it’s too late.

To arms, parents—let’s march
                the kids back to school.
Our cities may be asleep, the worms

                getting all the treats,
but the farmers demand we act
                while our future, giggling, dangles

from the gallows. Hurry, someone,
                for God’s sake,
reset the sun clock to zero-zero!

                Years hence no one will care
if we kept our pie holes stuffed
                with something

other than lyrics. The Queen
                watches no TV. God saves her
toil and trouble, powdering the air

                she breathes.
Though the pitch teems with knavish
                double-agents looking to score

a draw, our hearts rattle
                like baby teeth in a biscuit tin.
If we had it our way,

                we’d scrap the past, take
turns putting Scipio’s helmet on and watch
                our Vespas morph into Ducatis.

We were born hollow
                cannoli bounced between
relatives finger-deep in dope

                and chianti. “Dolce vita?”—
god willing we’ll spend the rest of our days
                sucking on teats—

or—if push comes to shove—
                munching on kebabs rolled inside
bimmer food trucks off Venice Blvd.

                Nostra culpa: the leather pants
and the Totenkopf come out just
                on holidays. We’re ourselves for real

when we wrap our arms around
                a whipped horse’s neck.
But—oh là là—it’s the screeching night-

                tram packed with refugees
from a hockey game that reminds us why
                after every war

we unlock our doors. Just don’t ask
                the man with a blower
strapped to his chest about maple leaves

                growing far and wide,
even on heads. We’ll endure—
                like the thousand-year-old

bison grass vodka. We’ll ford rivers,
                cross the Rockies, naked, if we must.
After sixty-nine mazurkas, let’s

give Chopin another chance.