Poem: "Concierge"
My first 7/7 effort for the new year: write a poem a day for one week, starting on the 7th day of the month. Not sure if the draft is any good, but I wrote about people about whom I don't usually write: politicians, scientists and actors. The first part, with its matter-of-fact tone, is at odds with the rest of the poem. The Millay section (Vincent) is factually inaccurate since she did not die in Paris, but I don't know if that fudge really matters. I could change her to someone else. The poem is a gallery of characters and may be added to.
Concierge
Guardian of
the gate, a doorman, I greet
your
visitors and keep out the street.
On rainy
days I whistle for your cab
and stow
your bags carefully at the back.
I salt the
sidewalk so you won’t slip,
after the
snowfall has been cleared in heaps.
When power
goes down, as in the earthquake,
I provide
candles, like my medieval namesake.
And when you
are gone,
I hold the
parcels for your return.
*
Welcome
back, Mr. Ceaușescu!
I almost did
not recognize you.
The ears are
dead giveaways,
even when
they stick out from a Chinese face.
I hear the
revolution is over.
We can all
come out of our covers.
Message for
you, sir, I think,
a prank:
Ceaușescu, go
to Hell!
You are
looking remarkably well.
*
Vincent, how
was Paree?
Did you
bring back a sonnet for me
from a dirty
café in Montmartre,
burnished in
your lovely meter?
You broke a
heart? And found
it was your
own?
O, matter
for the muses!
O,
martyrdom, the best of ruses!
Here, I’ll
bring up your steam trunk.
You’re a man
now but I’m a lover of the franc.
*
What took
you away, Madame Skłodowska-Curie, so long?
Work or
play? What a beautiful sarong!
I have held
your blue lab coat for your return.
Many asked
to touch its radiation,
half-lives
mostly, some split
personalities,
and just last week, a double date.
I suppose
they hope,
in some
measure, to be your isotope.
Good one,
that, eh?
Madame Curie-Skłodowska,
you have been too long away.
*
Is it you,
Mr. Mishima, behind that mask?
I’m sorry
that I have to ask.
Don’t be
angry, sir. You won’t believe
the cranks
that I had to get rid of.
No, no, I
don’t mean to imply that you are a crank
any more
than I am Anne Frank.
‘Tis the
season, sir, Halloween.
And your
mask is rather African.
Like it?
Why, sir, I lose my head over it.
And here is
your knife to make your costume complete.
*
Your pigeon,
Professor Skinner,
set off the
security scanner.
No animals
in the building.
Not for
Science or Superstition or fill in
the blank.
Rules are rules.
I didn’t set
the reinforcement schedules.
There’s the flashing
light for my coffee.
Now, if you
will excuse me,
I must see
to my refreshment,
before it
goes again to the Bangladeshi gent.
*
Only right
that you return as Thai,
what you
pretend to be in The King and I.
Yes, you
also return naked and dirt poor
but all of
us have to start from somewhere,
Vladivostok
or Sakhalin,
a home we
left or an imaginary inn.
Taidje,
Julius, Jule, Youl, Yul, Yuliy,
singing the
songs of the Romani,
collect your
hair as down-
payment for
a crown.
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