New Work

Here's one of Ed's recent poems:

Declaration of Ambrosius de Tortilla

(Discovered in a 16th Century tomb in southern Spain and translated by Ed Aust)

I, Ambrosius de Tortilla, the bonafide Conquistador of Quesadilla,

do hereby declare on my honor

that the sunburnt sleepers of park benches and stairwells

throughout this sacrosanct kingdom

are from this day exonerated of all debts to society,

forgiven of trespasses and pardoned of imperfections

as surely as my name is noble, my motives sincere,

and my reputation without blemish,

and let it hereby be established

throughout this wide and disordered empire of the forgotten,

downtrodden, misperceived and ill-humored,

that as certain as the black beetle treads unnoticed over

the sleeping chinchilla,

so shall you be recognized as beautiful and glorious in your way,

and let the malignantly unmotivated, discouraged, and jacks of no trades,

the uninsulated nomads of uncertain origins,

be hereby known as legal inheritors of all things remarkable and numinous.

May your names be recorded in the Book of the Distinguished,

your stories recited around campfires,

and your ballads sung by street-corner buskers

throughout this modest realm.

--Ambrosius de Tortilla, 1575