DREAMING

From time to time, Ming the Merciless,
(Relentless foe of Flash Gordon,
Former emperor of the planet Mongo)
Turns up in my dreams. Most often,
He has a character role -- an old soldier
Down on his luck, or a traffic cop
Trying to persuade angry chickens
To keep on their side of the road. Once
We were beggars and shared a tin bowl
Of quite horrible soup. My father
And Ming were for some reason friends.
Having recovered from seventeen bouts
Of certain death  -- including being tossed
Into three volcanoes and twice being thrown
Off cliffs and once being thrown off a cliff
Into a volcano -- Ming insists that
My father may return not much the worse
From having been buried for six years.

NY FATHER'S FRIEND MING (A LEFT HAND POEM)

Sure, my father knew all the Mings --
The Marvellous, the Meritless,
The Mucilaginous, the  Miraculous,
(And, for a few months, dated
Their sister, Lucy Ellen Ming)
But the Merciless was most his friend.
Ming retired some years back
As emperor of the planet Mongo.
He was tired, he said, of being resurrected
"I've lost count of how many times
Flash Gordon killed me; I think Dr. Zarkov
Killed me at least five times. Dale Arden
Pushed me into a volcano while I was proposing.
Even Prince Valiant, in a time- travel arc we did
In the Spring and Summer of 1941
Ran me through with a sword. Enough is enough."
I occasionally find stories my father
Wrote for his young grandchildren
Ming the Merciless appears in some of them
He is a beggar with a talking dog;
He is an absent-minded magician;
He is a reflection who has lost his mirror.
Always he is my father's friend.
I know I should root for Flash Gordon
But it would feel so disloyal.

OF THE COMPANY

Li Po occasionally turns up
In my father's stories .
Protean, he does magic,
Directs traffic, sings opera
With Placido's brother
Furioso Domingo.
It was Li Po who knew
Where my father's friend
Ming the Merciless was hiding
When he fell on hard times.

SO

You were dead so when the thunder
Asked me where you were I shrugged
And said you were in Kamionka Strumilowa
Some years before you were born
Teaching your father -- he was 10 or so --
The jokes he'd tell you when you were a boy.

You were dead so when the tree which nodded to you
Even when there was no wind said "Where is he?"
I spread my fingers wide and said you had gone undercover
Cleverly eluding the combined forces
Of Ming the Merciless and Dr. Destructo
And had found work as an invisible detective.

You were dead so when you asked me where I was
I pulled my beard and said "In the great boat of morning
Three cubits from the stern there is an oar
Which no one pulls. There I used to sit
But there's no telling where I've gotten to now."

ON THE PLANET MONGO

Ming the Merciless had nine brothers and three sisters

All named Ming. Mongo’s stern laws of alliteration

Demanded that each of them have a sobriquet

Beginning with the letter M. Flash Gordon

Could never quite tell them apart and would come

Prepared for battle only to find Ming the Musical

Armed only with a celestina and a thumb-piano

Or Ming the Miraculous, who did card tricks.

Dale Arden would complain to Dr. Zarkov

“What is wrong with him? The Mings look nothing alike!

And three of them are women!”