Maybe you counted on my sense of duty
To fill in your dreams
Or thought that in the end
All things would come around
To what you found obvious
To me, it was a shabby storefront
Cheap gilding framed the doorways
Loudspeakers blared assumptions
Crackling, as if through faulty wiring,
Or being consumed by fire
Sooner or later, I thought,
Collapse will come
My choices: cower, embrace the rubble,
Or leap free
Aldo was a character in a series of commercials for cheap Italian wine some years ago. A character who needed development, I thought.
Aldo, not a slave to fashion,
Walks in, enslaving fashion
In a prison of gestures,
In a sly looking-glass wink,
As if none of it matters
Except that it does.
As if the curious drape
Of his gaze did not encase
His inner essence
Like a gilded cage
Aldo, little Aldo
Peers through filigreed wiles,
Unaware of the stifling air
Within.
Only one thing is certain, and it is death.
Forget taxes: political posturing.
Plenty of people right here
in the land of the technically free
and occasionally brave
are too poor to pay taxes.
No one is too poor to die.
You will die,
and so will I;
all the people you’ve ever known,
and all you’ve never known,
will die.
You’ll miss them;
it will come as a shock.
Friends, enemies, bothersome acquaintances,
those you love, those you despise,
no matter.
Death will touch your heart,
because you will remember
that your own time is not yours to dictate,
that your death is not so remote.
When it happens to be someone you love,
who has been a part of your being,
it cracks the structure of your universe
from end to end.
You see a life severed, amputated.
There is a terrible urge to step in,
to finish things for them,
to see out their destinies, to hell with your own;
it will wait.
But you won’t,
you can’t.
The things undone, the lives unfinished,
the afterthoughts left adrift,
these will haunt you.
These ghosts will be your companions;
be good to them.
Twin flames
in the dying light
Only you can make fire
From the liquid night
Twin flames,
oh, my wounded heart
Such dreams
as we fling athwart
Our desire
like embers aglow
Like this
ancient long ago
I’m burned beyond repair
Let’s fling away despair
Twin flames
In the blinding night
Only you can make love
From this dynamite
Dorothy Parker is, of course, famous for witticisms, short, incisive, and very quotable. One of my favorites is, “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.” But she was a fine poet as well, and along with her better-known light-hearted efforts were some very dark verses, so I’ve included two poems about love, one from each variety. I’ll let you decide which is the more serious.
Comment
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania
August
When my eyes are weeds,
And my lips are petals, spinning
Down the wind that has beginning
Where the crumpled beeches start
In a fringe of salty reeds;
When my arms are elder-bushes,
And the rangy lilac pushes
Upward, upward through my heart;
Summer, do your worst!
Light your tinsel moon, and call on
Your performing stars to fall on
Headlong through your paper sky;
Nevermore shall I be cursed
By a flushed and amorous slattern,
With her dusty laces’ pattern
Trailing, as she straggles by.
exiles child 