Latin Lyrics of Luiz Mee

Cover Art by Lucienne Dorrance

2003

 

It was never entirely obvious to Luiz Mee who he was. His name was spelled with a double e, and when he would say “me” it was like saying his last name, which, if his last name had been “Brown,” would be like saying, “I don’t care what you say about Brown, I will not change my ways one iota to satisfy you.”

  Luiz Mee’s Pessoaian counterpart is Ricardo Reis. Mee learned his Latin in public school rather than from the Jesuits, and whereas Reis crafted his odes from Horacian models, Mee succumbs to fits of Bacchic abandon and is more akin to Catullus, at times dabbling in the pornographic.  Both express a belief in Fate, but Mee seems to accept the condition with less seriousness. Reis’s philosophy is closer to the stoicism of Marcus Aurelius and Mee’s view is closer to the pre-socratic atomist, Heraclitus.

  Luiz has a brother, Harry, and a sister, Mary. The Mees have never married, Harry because he’s so hairy, and Mary because she is so insistent.  Luiz never married because he suffered castration from a horse kicking him in the testicles as a young teen. “Solo mio!” he says.

 

 

CHILLING OUT WITH THE ECLOGUES

 

I smoke and contemplate

autumn.

 

I am still

reading Virgil.

 

The leaves turn to gold—

 

So much for Caesar

and so much for...

“Damn, Silenus

 

How do you expect me to rhyme ease

with bees in my beard?”

 

 

AUGUSTUS TURNS IN HIS TOMB

 

bottom of the 13th

Willie faces the left-hander

2 for 5

homerun for the 9th

                        Overcast has blown away

in the next room

a sewing machine whrrrs

draining the power

                                    Static

fast ball hit into right

for a base

            The mood shifts

LeFever is up

 

Why is the spectacular held

in San Francisco

when the riots are in L.A.?