Babel, 2016

The tower fell, the music died, lies were born and politics bloomed, nurtured by solicitors and barristers and jurists. Harlequins appeared with trays of wigs and false teeth and breast implants, and journalists huddled, ignoring everything, while they made up news.

Some say it started in Arkansas while others claim it was Illinois but all agree the party reconvened in New York, with eyes seeking out Washington, D.C.  Strangely, the odor never changed, the smog never lifted, the sewage piled higher and higher, the clatter of Champaign glasses lilting.

No mirrors there only portraits of agreeable people into which women stared as they fixed their makeup while from time to time on nearby walls robust men in evening dress, slightly stained, stubbed out unsmoked cigars strangely smelling of fish.

“Walla – walla – Washington”, a slight, slightly overweight somewhat older woman with short blonde hair kept singing until gleeful cackles interrupted and she hummed something that sounded like, “we came, we saw, he died”, then the cackles resumed.

Psychotically sounding sycophants flew hither and yon carrying messages, typing madly on computer keyboards, convening fake focus groups designed to tell them what she wanted to hear, straining not to hear whispered echoes shouting “off with their heads”!

The tower fell, the music died, lies were born and politics bloomed, nurtured by solicitors and barristers and jurists. Harlequins appeared with trays of wigs and false teeth and breast implants, and journalists huddled, ignoring everything, while they made up news.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2016; all rights reserved