I Saw

by Donald Welch

The centurion stared wide eyed. He had fallen asleep in a thicket in Gaul’s Black 
Forest and now he was standing in New York City’s Times Square, his language 
lacking the vocabulary to express all he saw. Gradually he regained his militant calm 
and concluded that this must be a vision, one of the strange tricks this forest plays on 
invaders. Tourists and New Yorkers alike passed by checking for a sign, imagining 
this man must be a busking or promoting a production of Julius Ceasar. But the 
centurion took all this as a good omen, an assurance of victory in his Gaelic Wars. 
“Here is Rome alive and well,” he thought. Looking at the clothing models he saw 
Venus, watching video games he witnessed the influence of Mars. In a bar he caught 
glimpses of The Giants playing in Meadowland’s Stadium and saw that gladiators 
continued to be popular. The multitude of languages and cultures meant that trade 
must be flourishing. True, much had changed, but he reasoned that was inevitable, 
culture comes and goes, but empire is eternal.



90's Power Hour
                                        A found poem

Somebody once told me:
we all want something beautiful.
All I can say is that my life is pretty plain,
I got a Dalmatian and I can still get high
to pass the time in my room alone.
For what it’s worth, I want to get away,
I wish the real world would just stop hassling me.

I know who I want to take me home,
she likes me for me. How bizarre!
What is love, the dreamer’s disease,
but faith in nothing? Be my lover,
put the past away and let’s delay our misery;
turn the lights off, carry me home.