A pleasant cruise

Winds weeping at our bow

Sullen wood creaking with no one to hear

For we nine have the whole affair to ourselves!

Fancy that

No repudiated Branaghs flouncing the lust out of the theatres,

No cigar-smoking zealots cleaning out the house under throbbing strobes

No, just us

Our rag-doll alliance

Thrown together like yarn and thumbtacks

With all the King’s Horses to hold us together

So we jostle about with the production, in which

I am the Cressidye, the Mocker, the sly

Instructing the wicked

Giving birth to the knaves

Delivering the pink rose to my lover’s lapel

Maisie, she’s the Bartend

Who joins in our frothing shanties

Who stumbles backward when she has to

Yes, that Dolly Oblonsky

With a star-chart burned into her back

Long John wins the role of the Sophomore,

Surly cosmonaut that he is,

Electing to deflower Ms. Axminster

With tasteful exuberance

And you there,

Crooning wistful,

Are the Golden Thread, and why wouldn’t you be?

Simmering, joyful, delirious

You fit the role like you sang it to life yourself

You, patron of the Sisyphus on St. Mark’s

Beautiful, untimely jewel

We all flit about

Chanting illusory hymns

Sawing the proverbial arms off

Rushing grim truths to their rightful sleep

Then above dark currents,

To that eeriest of banquet halls do we retire,

That echoing cavern

Spoiled sourdough

Glass opals

Sweet jasmine

Transfixed by our ingenuity,

Never pausing to wonder

Why we are so, so alone

But me, I slip away

Away to that forgotten deck

Beneath the languorous stairway

It recalls too firmly the breeze at Regent’s Park

Where lies a wide-eyed monument

A lion-hearted desecration

My every hard-earned notion

Reduced to the verification

Of an invaluable yet disparate truth

So I have that faithful helmsman Maro

Chart a new course which takes us

Through hokey, mournful townships

And Anasazi graveyards

To capsize in the fires of L.A.

☉