Sottosopra

Milano, Italy, April 1945

The strongman doesn’t look all that strong 
hanging by his ankles from a lamppost 
the strongman now a pissed-upon dead man.

The strongman once a target of mob’s adulation 
now humiliation of well-aimed cabbages as rotten 
as his black-shirt thugs his macho megalomania.

Vainglorious no longer the strongman 
neither primps nor proclaims nor declaims
as he’d done for more than twenty years.

Delusional overreaching for Roman renewal 
the strongman doesn’t look all that strong 
hanging by his ankles from a lamppost. 

* Italian for upside down