Mar-a-Lago

Mar-a-Lago

 

At Mar-a-Lago there are chandeliers

made of finest golden goldest gold

They add distinction and a touch of class

like the airbrush of a centerfold

The half-burnt candles and gleaming fixtures

hang motionless above the potions and elixirs

that can congregate around the narcissistic mind.

Not so far across the state

the alligators lie in wait 

skimming low beneath the surface, showing only eyes

always to their startled prey the gator’s snap seems far away

then comes as a surprise.

The owner stops in now and then

to hoots and whoops and nostalgic rebel yells

He knows the score, the price of fame.

And when they stand and bay, then kneel and pray

he knows to send the truth away

for it can be such an inconvenience

in the airing out of well-earned grievance.

Who could have known?  Who could have foreseen it?

that when a gator bares his teeth he means it?

that an ill wind blown ‘cross the favored land

cannot be banished by a wave of a hand

Does he know that he has sinned?

He knows only that the wind, the blustering wind

has been always set against him

as he wandered the fields of Iowan corn

or along the darkening, blood-lusted prairie

a figure from an imaginary

pulling a wagon, hectored by crows

burdened with secrets he assures us he knows

hoping to put on his medicine shows.

Never unsure, never uncertain

Dorothy saw him at a tug of the curtain

He is our Wizard, we are his Oz

all he asks in return is applause, everlasting applause

after that his intentions get hazy

it was also like that for Gatsby with Daisy.

If all things can happen but none can be true

we only discover what we already knew

and wander the land, the coarse arriviste

partly the fleecer, partly the fleeced

partly the image we see in a pool

dissolving away at the last, how cruel

that myth should end, to say there be a limit

that there be talk of plenty when there's one born every minute.

Author's Note