Le Coeur a gaz, 1923

in three short acts
the last spectacle on the program
was a complete dada farce
with a trumpet in front of the infuriated audience
playing the Marseillaise.
this time around, there were no professional
actors to storm out singing
about the utter pointlessness
of playing body parts in cubist costumes
made of stiff tubing
which reduced their walking to a geriatric shuffle.
out front, the police heard the angry voices and stormed inside
where the fights between the dadaists and the future
surrealists began in earnest, with several badly beaten
and in no mood to be mollified.
shouts for order bounced off walls, hitting no one.
damage to the theater was considerable.
seats were smashed and faces bloodied.
Aragon tried to rescue Eluard while
the police arrested the entire audience,
but it all was a big misunderstanding.

facebook

had i died on the field of battle
never would i have heard of Mark Zuckerberg
and his great good fortune, which is
still going gangbusters, reaching almost as high
as the falling stars passing above my night eyes.
and he isn't satisfied with the status quo, which may not exist
except in imagination, as his two newest friends can attest.
Jan and Brian are not only eating in his kitchen,
they are now part of the intrigue and the high jinks of the facebook universe,
intensely reading the first section of their new program
and seeing the WhatsApp logo blinking with dollar signs,
sufficiently drowning out the relatively tame music of their former lives.
yes, new footlights are shining brightly on these young men,
and venture capital stagehands are busy counting heads, while the surprised
audience sits enraptured, though a few spectators
are heckling and causing a riot.
it would be hard to clamor onto the stage and outshine
this performance.

that sewing-woman

the blue train was boarded by Coco Chanel
and her friend Misia Sert, 

with or without tickets it's impossible to know.
but what is certain is that, frequently,
they dreamed of attending the last great
Ballet in Paris and were in a hurry.

they invited old friends to join them,
men and women of course, who enjoyed
rumors and gala premieres,
especially when the music was provided by a lover,
like Stravinsky, who was not on the train.

no, he was at that very moment nicely ensconced
in Chanel's apartment, working on a score for four
pianos and some voices, one of which was silent.

but on the train, a florist who wanted to hold a party
walked the narrow aisle selling beautifully decorated
arrangements and Coco bought several to share
with her friends;  they all smiled just as the train
began to move.  

they knew
a beautiful blonde Russian princess was the chief engineer
and it was she who blew the whistle to startle the passengers,
who were looking out the windows to see several
surrealists following the tracks, laughing their heads off.

Coco and Misia saw them and began to laugh, too.

the princess, perched on her forward seat, steered the train
away from the station.

it was a one-way track, but still proved easy to get lost.

and no one cared.

the widower on the roof

the widower on the roof
was what the bitchy boys called him:
it was fun to hear their laughs.

he was terrified of typhoid, it was true,
and kept his distance from a lover
alone on a death bed, who would
soon die with no one at his side.

but Cocteau held no illusions about being brave
and fled!

by being in Monte Carlo, he missed the funeral
which was talked about later as being
a service en blanc: white eyes seeing everything
in white, including the white horses hired to pull the hearse.

the young man who died was a poet, poetically speaking.

his sorrowing fans followed the horses in a freezing rain.

wet and cold behind the black band they moved

to their lively music,

all the way to the white cemetery
where white flowers
were piled neatly upon a white coffin
placed carefully next to a freshly-dug white hole.

Les Demoiselles

there was a man
who dragged along his wife
and son
but nothing pleased him.
he drove around in his car,
house-hunting and with an
eye for a young girl.
on each new street he saw more than a few
flirts and thought
"Les Demoiselles!" but did
not stop,
at least while a wife was by his side.
in any event,
he always flatly refused to pay more
than his fair share
(as his diary confirms) and
multiple girls at once would be a major buy.
he never liked to be cheated,
so his wife was unaware of what money he spent,
while his son resented them both.
then on a busy street,
when he was prepared to be tempted,
he met a woman who had some interesting traits
and life became good.
Just before he died he was heard to say
"Drink to me!"
when he died, he gave
everything away.

the beautiful Jezebel

Well, I had you in the afternoon
While the stars stayed silent in the sky
I could have held you for a thousands nights
But you wouldn't give it a try
Oh, no one was guarding our back door
So I was pushed out the ol'front way
Passing the lonely hearts club band;
I heard a love song they used to play
And was completely under your thumb and feeling blue
It was harder now to get a proper sense of you
I kept falling under a midnight spell
Turned myself into a half empty shell
While you, my dear, became the beautiful Jezebel
And when i phoned and got no answer
Your friend said you were a ballet dancer
Living from a suitcase on the open road
Hiding inside your pretty expensive pot of gold
But when I asked for a better point of view
I only got a momentary glimpse of you
Well, i gave you roses and my sweat shirt
Your left me with a letter and those thousand words hurt
I took a pill and had a drink, that's what I think
I heard no sound and soon found myself looking around
And was completely under your thumb and feeling blue
It was harder now to get a proper sense of you
I kept falling under a midnight spell
Turned myself into an empty shell
While you, my dear, became the beautiful Jezebel