Ventriloquist in Brussels

In Brussels my brother

plies his trade as a ventriloquist.

His deepest voice

thrown an oceanic distance

only a multinational could manage

is Big Pharma

booming, fatherly

generous in a technical way,

wartime leader against TB

The business bistro voice

is a sportsman's

capable of levitating a Guiness

while reciting football stats,

steering dialog

with an unnoticed tug on the reins

smile-speaking through pauses

Saguaro in stature

with no trace of sadness

he gazed the billowy Atlantic

from the air far above submerged ruins

of die glückliche Zeit,

merchantmen, midshipmen

& slain Wolfpacks whose prey they had been --

to each the North Atlantic had been

There are no hospitals.

Drugs could flow in rivers around them

It's wealth chatting with wealth from a distance.

May as well read poems to the dead.

Injustice has a compact snarl

an economic calculation,

the measured tradeoffs

of a virtuoso voice-thrower

taunting the doomed with perfect intonation

America's fading wealth against the world's poor

the other Battle of the Atlantic

August 2011 for Ross