<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Cesare Borgia in Heaven<\/strong><\/p>\n He nods to his father, the pope, \u201cMind your own business,\u201d After rearranging his silk robes Borgia sips wine from a silver goblet. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jon Wesick<\/strong> is the host of the Gelato Poetry Series, instigator of the San Diego Poetry Un-Slam, and an editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual<\/em>, Jon Wesick has published over two hundred fifty poems in journals such as The New Orphic Review, Pearl, Pudding, <\/em>and Slipstream.<\/em> He has also published over fifty short stories. Jon has a Ph.D. in physics and is a longtime student of Buddhism and the martial arts. One of his poems won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists contest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cesare Borgia in Heaven He nods to his father, the pope, sets a velvet cushion atop a giant rose petal, and sits to savor the warm light of God. A monk in brown cassock stares. \u201cMind your own business,\u201d Borgia draws his dagger, \u201cor I\u2019ll cut your eyes out!\u201d The monk looks away. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3906"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3908,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3906\/revisions\/3908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nsets a velvet cushion atop a giant rose petal,
\nand sits to savor the warm light of God.
\nA monk in brown cassock stares.<\/p>\n
\nBorgia draws his dagger,
\n\u201cor I\u2019ll cut your eyes out!\u201d
\nThe monk looks away. Saints
\nand angels cower, pretending
\nsudden interest in their hymnals.<\/p>\n
\nBorgia adopts the dignified mien
\nthat served him well in politics.
\nThe nerve of some people! Questioning
\nhis right to be here. Bribery,
\nmarrying his sister to the powerful,
\nand murdering them
\nonce they were no longer useful.
\nHe earned his place. The trick
\nwas to convince the public he was on their side.
\nNo wonder Machiavelli wrote a book about him.<\/p>\n
\nEven if poisoned, it can no longer hurt
\nhim now. He smiles
\nat what others refuse to admit.
\nIf gold can buy \u201cjustice\u201d on Earth
\nwhy should things be different in heaven?<\/p>\n