After the incident
we gathered in the reception area
Stalling
Making small talk
Vaguely excited and vaguely bored

We were leaning into
Little gala tables
Covered in white linen
Raised for conversation or
Fashionable idleness

Why look who’s here!
You were slipping by
Like a noblewoman
Floating in her day-dress
so the human machinations didn't show

Why it’s been thirty years if not a day!
It’s not like you were exactly moved
My friend, your friend
barely roused you
Are you plastic?
A formally once-was?
You looked at me as if your eyes were
Marbles
Made of glass and somewhat pretty,
Just for decoration
It was hard to say in such darkness
Your darkness in particular
It may have been the suit.

I know that they’ve fêted you here before.
A king returns!
Is it the magma chamber
for your imminence?
Or a mere
Alcove?

The face doesn’t really move
Much anymore
Forever frozen in a slight smugness
Your mouth that strikes me as
somewhat meta
if that’s at all possible
And it seems to be
A bit rude
A noirish marvel
A dark star

Funny you never once looked at me really
Never said Hello
Nor Good Evening
And the things that
I could have said
Do you remember how you tried to drill a hole into a poured concrete floor
with a cheap tool
while we laughed about dentistry
as opposed to *** practices
How I tried to find a cherry picker
through the yellow pages
on a Saturday afternoon
How you quizzed me about my practice and how I played dumb
How your dealer ate my dinner when I was looking to the right

But I remained silent
bemused more than disgusted
It has been a long time and
Why would that
forgotten phospherence
be me?

I wanted to say
Did you know
that that penthouse after-party
at the
Marmont
was one of the saddest nights of my life?
I leaned over the balcony and stared at the Marlborough Man
puffing rings onto Sunset Blvd.
Desperate.
How has it come to this I asked
shocked myself
This has all gone so wrong.
I looked down upon the street
watching the rings echo
and cars swerving off to nowhere

No amount of drink can fix this night
and they killed the joint without me
being boys.
One is now dead by hanging.
I’d have preferred the other.

But here you are.
Silent
with absent eyes
after all these years
I never opened my mouth
I couldn’t seem to configure the lips precisely
I don’t know why
Perhaps they refused to comply
despite my feathery efforts.
No need.

Miracle on 34th Street.
So good, she was terrifying.
Unable to cry on cue,
Mother tore a butterfly to pieces,
And she sobbed and sobbed.

Compartmentalized,
Body and spirit broken
By the hours at
Chateau Marmont.

From sweetness
To restlessness.
From academic nods
To drinking in the scenery.
From charmed head shots
To one too many dry martinis.

Gorgeous and gloomy,
"She clings to things with her eyes,"
And naturally was committed.
Her orchestra played
A signature tune:
Splendor in the Grass.

Picture is in the tank
And so is the marriage.
Again.
Furlough is on the brink
And so is the divorce.
Again.

Charting course,
Casting reels,
Dreaming where the boats vanish,
Drowning in a paradox of watercolors.

Who pushed you over the side,
Russian doll?

The dangerously glamorous life of Chateau Marmont, where everybody is racing at an incredible speed. Velvet nights fraught with promise and mystery under large canyon moons. Skinny dipping in the heated saltwater pool, bodies dripping wet, in the privacy of palm trees, old Hollywood charm in swaying leaves fanned across the indigo sky, as we dangled over the city. Parties in the hidden bungalows, punctuated by pinot grigio and mescal mules, in and out of bedrooms and beds and clothes. ******* on hands, car keys forgotten, I tore your silk shirt as you threw it off the bed.