The Fall [Lyric Poem]

Rome fell,
     the Mongols & Ottomans, too.
 Great powers fall
     often sans much ado.
     
     [Psst! someday yours will, too.]

They can't help but crumble;
     the foundations get rot.
 And there's too much weight
     to bear, without spurring plots.

Plots and schemes and pandering, 
     all throughout the State.
 Forget those Barbarians, the threat 's 
     inside the gates. 

Love Locks [Free Verse]

Wandering through a new city,
 I come upon a bridge:
  its rails loaded with locks.
   They call them "love locks."

It gets me wondering how many locks
 long outlived the love they memorialized?

How many were lust locks --
 linked to the bridge before 
  the couple really knew each other's
   vexing peccadillos?

How many were like ill-advised back tattoos,
 a lover's name - someone one met in Vegas - 
    and whose name one wouldn't
       otherwise remember, 
     were it not inked across one's spine
        in a 120-point flame-festooned font?