Rome Still Burned

Rome burned, while the Emperor Nero,

being an Emperor,

decided to play the violin,

a miraculous endeavour,

considering the lack of violins available

until the classical music era;

but then, he was a self-proclaimed deity,

so that explains that little anomaly.

If you’re a God, though,

for whom time is no obstacle

to your choice of musical accompaniment

to the infernal destruction

of your Empire’s capital,

why choose the wretched violin?

‘What’s Nero up to now?’

He’s playing his anachronistic violin again.

‘Are you sure that isn’t just a cat

burning in the flames?’

In one of the infinity of parallel universes,

Nero is a rocking on a Fender strat.

‘Purple haze that, you bastards!’

he roars at the advancing flames

over the Satanic tones of his distorted wah-wah.

In other elsewheres,

he is ripping up some funky bass lines;

improvising a jazz solo

on the only saxophone currently on planet Earth;

dropping a piano from the top floor

of his Emperor’s penthouse

in an avant-garde experiment;

singing along to a karaoke backing track

of ‘There is a Light That Never Goes Out’.

Which, incidentally,

is the tune which he was playing on his violin

in our reality’s version of events.