Homage to the Spanish Armada

By Steve Brooks

On this daylight evening
let’s build something truly absurd
a plank of fog
a mast of peg leg
and skull cannonball
the feeble Galleon sinking
we’ll shoot it past the moon to shine darkly
through the past darkly
Oh morning star of ineptness
orbiting a vagrant path
with a ship of fools
on the day of the dead rising
The one trick pony with fallen rider
leads the procession stumblebum
Put on your mask
your gesture of stupidity
with a drunken fleet of barflies
the army of boozehounds howling
defeated by nature and circumstance
and sixteen eccentric toreadors
prancing on a dead man’s chest
A fiesta with lethal injection
with its silver armor smashed by rocks and wind
the sirens sweetly sing:
Oh Titanic,
Oh XX Valdez,
Oh Challenger, etc., etc.,
Vanity Oh Vanity
how the mighty have fallen
see how they run amok.