All pleasure is bitter ash.

His least known extravagances lay sunken.

For a thousand years, fish attached soft eggs

to gold trim decks, womb-grey walls harboured

young generations, black-striped, brown

chequered juveniles strode gangways, beat up

on interspecies rivalries; evolution’s fascism.

The next emperor wanted some of this too.

Drained lakes of blood to get the real thing;

Caligula’s pleasure barges, hulls sundered

his excesses housed in concrete bunkers.

The other prince (darker one) having

lost his fun with things Italian; burned them.

The SS unimpressed; seahorse as senator.