Don Tarquinio

DON TARQUINIO

“the work errs

on the side of

extreme distinction”

—Frederick Rolfe, 

Baron Corvo, DON RENATO

Please pardon me, my dears—

If my diction goes beyond baroque

And perhaps wanders extravagantly—

Into rather tres risqué racy rococo

What medieval fantasias overcome me—

When puffing away on my hookah!!!

My mind gets scrambled with macaronic—

Italian, Greek and Latin dizzy divagations

Concocting pretty words like progymnast—

I’m just a slave who performs contortions

Perturbing pouty words like proterve—

An adjective meaning “violent, wanton”

Pube-esque as one arrived at puberty—

Hardly anything very prissy or modest

This day in Venice in our gondola—

Zildo awakes from his afternoon torpor

His palatial prick and ducal pubes—

Similitude to an anguicomous Gorgon

I’ve developed a marvelous immunity—

From his uncut exquisite snake-bite