'I dreamt tonight that I did feast with Caesar'...

by lois hambleton

(Cinna the Poet — Act 3, Scene 3)

...The senate’s steps have crumbled down - I told him. He sighed and I could see the glowing bowl of Rome - the sky, all milk and rose. Yet, grubs did penetrate the purpling grapes piled high upon the laden table. The inner pocket of my sapphire jacket, held a phial of rhubarb gin - an angel brought it. My school girl diary also blue (with pencil notes about some dream, some ideology) held, within the grasp of Caesar’s hand and smiling while he sipped his wine he edged it near the open flames -They all ran mad, he said, the stabbing ones. The public school boy on the bus who used to stare, reclining there. My father, eating dormice dipped in honey, spouting forth - I never understood this thing called freedom. I dug my plot, my cauliflowers, my spuds. He had, in actual fact, with monstrous guns defended Arnhem from invasion. I thought of cauliflowers sat rotting in a sodden field, tiny potatoes that I can’t be stuffed to peel. My public school boy, how I loved his eyes, his hair, his mother’s purring Jaguar. My father, eating meat from Caesar’s table. The gin, delivered by some irate angel. I woke. Wild beating wings had brushed my sapphire jacket. A point to reach, I thought, that everything I voted for was wrong and images would long remain, regarding dipping ‘anything’ - in honey.

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From Birmingham UK Lois Hambleton has poetry published by Culture Matters Co-Operative Ltd, Poetry Bus, The Madrigal Press, Transcendent Zero Press, Anti-Heroin Chic, Last Stanza Poetry Journal and others. Her professional life has been spent teaching in adult education and community rehabilitation units. She has work included in two addiction anthologies - A Wild and Precious Life (Unbound) & Despite Knowing (Fore Street Press).