2003
It was never entirely obvious to Luiz Mee who he was.
His name was spelled with a double e, and when he would say “me” it was like saying his last
name, which, if his last name had been “Brown,” would be like
saying, “I don’t care what you say about Brown, I will not change
my ways one iota to satisfy you.”
Luiz Mee’s Pessoaian counterpart is Ricardo Reis. Mee learned his Latin in
public school rather than from the Jesuits, and whereas Reis crafted his odes
from Horacian models, Mee succumbs to fits of Bacchic abandon and is more akin
to Catullus, at times dabbling in the pornographic. Both express a belief in Fate, but Mee seems to accept the
condition with less seriousness. Reis’s philosophy is closer to the
stoicism of Marcus Aurelius and Mee’s view is closer to the pre-socratic
atomist, Heraclitus.
Luiz has a brother, Harry, and a
sister, Mary. The Mees have never married, Harry because he’s so hairy,
and Mary because she is so insistent.
Luiz never married because he suffered castration from a horse kicking
him in the testicles as a young teen. “Solo mio!” he says.
CHILLING
OUT WITH THE ECLOGUES
I
smoke and contemplate
autumn.
I
am still
reading
Virgil.
So
much for Caesar
and
so much for...
“Damn,
Silenus
How
do you expect me to rhyme ease
with
bees in my beard?”
AUGUSTUS
TURNS IN HIS TOMB
bottom
of the 13th
Willie
faces the left-hander
2
for 5
homerun
for the 9th
Overcast
has blown away
in
the next room
a
sewing machine whrrrs
draining
the power
Static
fast
ball hit into right
for
a base
The mood shifts
LeFever
is up
Why
is the spectacular held
in
San Francisco
when
the riots are in L.A.?