Marie Antoinette

It was a real bummer
The French took her dog from her
And let her keep nothing from home at all

She was Marie Antoinette
And she really loved that pet
But she was at everyone’s beck and call

She was all German
But still determined
To learn to speak French as her duty royal

She was the dauphine
And soon to be queen
Of France until they watched her head roll and fall

Her job, to be pretty
And just a bit witty
A regular eighteenth century Barbie doll

Royal down to her toes
She wore the finest hose
And dressed to the nines for her garden strolls

They say she was spoiled
But nightly she toiled
To get the Dauphin to get on the ball

To give the king an heir
Or even a pair
But all that prince ever did was stall stall stall

Until late one night
They turned out the lights
The Prince gave the greatest performance of all

Underneath the sheets
He gave his queen a treat
Nine months later the doctor made a house call

“Holy smokes,” they said.
“The Prince is a dad
And Antoinette is our queen with her hair so tall.”

So she done her duty
And she done it truly
Then she spent the French out of home and alcohol

Down came the Bastille
Up the People’s will
And a budget that gave her no hat or carryall

They said goodbye to a queen
At the guillotine
Where Antoinette made her final curtain call

And now that you’ve heard
All that occurred
Do you think she deserved to lose that dog at all?

Before the walls

The old man Priam came to the tent of Achilles
to plea for the body of his son, the old man came
for Hector slain before the walls where Patroclus fell
before the walls, before the walls of the city
where ten thousand Greeks were cut down,
and ten thousand Trojans more.

Priam mourned and Achilles too, they cried for all
the dead that night, these sons of Mars grieved the deaths.
They spoke of heroes, of horses and the sea.
“I was a child once,” the king said, “the city my home.”
“I was a boy too on an island a distance away.”
“I was a rider of horses.” “I a runner of races,” Achilles

unburdened his heart. “Then I took up the spear.”
“And I the shield.” “King, you make a good shield.”
“You are a great spear. Without you, the Greeks would be gone.”
“Why did my cousin die?” “Why did the gods steal my son away?”
“You are a king and I but a man, yet we grieve the same.”
“This is why the gods gave us tears,” the old man said.

And what did the Warrior say? “Tears are not enough.
The grief that I fear will never fall away.” “Nor mine.”
The old man carried his son home to the Funeral Games
before the walls that were once the city of Troy,
home to Helen and Paris, Andromache and once Hector,
the first-born of Hecuba and Priam inside the walls

of Troy.