She starred with Bogart, Douglas, and Victor Mature.
The Smokey voiced blonde whose motives weren’t all pure,
Lisabeth Scott was the last of her line;
Femme Fatales of film Noir, you know her kind.
In the forties and fifties she was in her prime.
She was the subject of scandal of a ****** nature
When the tabloids discovered that no man would date her.
Like Garbo and Stanwyck, stars in their own stead
Lisabeth preferred a brunette in her bed.
For her men had their uses, Men had their places
But she found herself drawn to soft feminine faces.

I would listen, in the dark, as the L.P. circled round.
A big fan, I’ll admit it, of this petite brunette’s sound.
I was shocked the day I heard you’d starved yourself to death.
Talent, beauty, youth all gone; the recordings all you left.
I hear you still at the holidays like a ghost of Christmas past.
Occasionally on the radio for your hits were built to last.
Most often when your C.D. plays as I drift off to sleep
So long ago, so long ago, but still your voice sounds so sweet.
Those who touch lips with fame die twice I’ve heard it told:
Once when we’ve forgotten them, then again when they grow cold.

It’s too delicate to touch, but beautiful to behold.
An Illuminated prayer book, from Bruges, I’ve been told.
The unknown artist carbonized vellum taken from a sheep,
Into a thing of beauty that is not mine to keep.
The images are beautiful, a celebration of the Divine,
a testament of faith from another place and time.

Time has traded in his wing-ed chariot;
He donated it to the obnoxious Kars for Kids.
Still, I wouldn’t worry about Time.
It’s not like the old boy has hit the skids.
I saw him, just today, down by the station
He was styling in his Porsche nine forty-four.
Whatever is his final destination-
He’ll be getting there much faster, that’s for sure!

It’s almost as if Time had a midlife crisis;
Realized he’s no stud muffin anymore.
His grey and grizzled beard could use a trim.
He should buy a suit and ditch the robes.
He needs a woman to help him spend his money;
With the miracle of compound interest he has loads.
Thus, while I may drive a Fourteen year old Chevy
and eat my lunch out of a paper bag.
Time is styling in his Porsche nine forty-four;
I guess, for him, the economy’s not that bad.

You know my face yet forget my name,
but then, it’s for my roles I’m known.
I’ve spend a lifetime in the game.
Now, in the shadows, I am alone
I’ve lived perhaps a hundred lives-
on film, yet failed to live my own.
A stranger to my flesh and blood
whose children won’t pick up the phone.
I remember that it used to ring
Back when my acting won acclaim.
For years the star was on my door,
I slept with starlets, drank Champagne.
Now my Cancer bites within
and I take pills to mask the pain.
There will be no more roles for me
Though I could make a passable Lear;
Hear me raving in the storm
but it’s a waste with no Fool near.
For me there will be no happy ending.
Each painful breath is such a chore.
I won praise for my “authenticity”
But Love wound up on the cutting room floor.

I have observed that history rhymes,
with no exact repeats each time.
As foreign nationals flock to fight
For ISIS and the Caliphate.
It seems I’ve heard this tune before
When socialists fought in the
Spanish war.
That dress rehearsal for World War Two
That played out on the Iberian plains.
Then Communists and Fascists fought
and idealists were slaughtered for their dreams.
Now in the village of Kobane
Its U.S. drones, not **** Planes,
The Kurds expel the men in black
Who leave behind their friends remains.
Foreign fighters by the score
won’t need their passports anymore.
They fought against America,
Is this a second Guernica?

Today three hundred gather recalling to the World its’ shame.
They’ve come once more to Auschwitz on a more comfortable train.
The youngest, in their Seventies, were children at the time,
when Russians overran the camp and exposed the Nazis’ crimes.
If you were gypsy Gay or Jew incarcerated there
They starved and worked you unto death-
Your grave was in the air.
The walks were paved with bits of bone from those who died before.
These lives and deaths were cataloged for the ***** Chancellor.
All who remain now gather for this last and final time,
to testify to their suffering and rebuke those who deny.