WHEN DEATH COMES, IT WILL HAVE YOUR EYES
(Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi )


I once knew a man
who knew a man

who had seen
F. Scott Fitzgerald

drinking a milkshake
in a drug store

(vanilla or chocolate
he couldn't be sure)

flicking idly
through a magazine

( no he didn't know
which magazine )

in the company of
some blonde.

"I'll never forget
what he said!"

"Let's go to the supermarket
Shelia!" he said.

And that's it?
"That's it!"

His voice caressed
each syllable

as if
he were on stage.

But he was like a man
becoming a manakin

like in that episode of
The Twilight Zone

you know the one?"


In a future that had as yet
to happen.

"I don't know what I had
expected..."

The man who knew the man
who knew the man

who had seen and heard
F. Scott Fitzgerald.

"Maybe a Gatsby or
a Gatsby

who had survived the novel's
tragic ending

and wished
he hadn't!"



Here now
at home

Mr. Fitzgerald
sits in his armchair

eating a chocolate bar
checking out next year's

Princeton
football team.

suddenly like a puppet
yanked on a string

he stands up
hand on mantlepiece

like some bad acting
in a silent movie

before falling
to the floor.

He will never
get up.



Nick and Gatsby come
stand by his dying.

So do Monroe Stahr
and Kathleen Moore

even though
words fail them.

Yet they now
more real than he.

Monroe reads
some last scribbled lines.

"There was a flutter
from the wings of God

and you
lay dead.

Your  books
were in your desk I guess

and some unfinished chaos
in your head

was dumped to nothing
by the great janitress of

destinies."

Gatsby
closes his eyes.