Eleanor and Charlotte ,
drifting in sunlit reverie ,
see Marie Antoinette at her
easel
and the beginning of her
sorrow .
☆
How many cherubs , smiling ,
fixed scribes of shimmering
light ,
recline incumbent in vast marble halls .
☆
When ,
frozen in Time ,
two maidens in a doorway ,
pass a ceramic jug
between one another
for eternity .
☆
A man yells ,
seeing people back in time ,
that they were
too close to the chapel .
☆
Look , over a bridge ,
past an aqueduct ,
lay an unkempt meadow ,
where the mood was unnatural
and unpleasant .
☆
While behind dull meadow ,
the treeline was
as woodwork or tapestry .
☆
Flat and lifeless ,
as a shadow without
light or dark .
☆
No wind stirred the trees
and the two women
felt an unease of dreariness ,
as if walking in someone else's dream .
☆
" Wherefor the Trianon ?! "
The gardener stopped his labour
☆
" You will see a fine lady
   in summer gown
   and a large white hat . "
☆
And suddenly he was gone .
☆
Then , finally at the gate ,
a large man ,
in period costume
and born of a malevolent star .
☆
Dark cloak and
smallpox scarred ,
he stared forebodingly
under brim of black hat .
☆
Cronos , Father Time and
Death .
☆
The Future was stalling .

In a phalanx of four: Peter, Lisa, Dave, and I, descended a waterfall of marble stairs - pilgrims to another time - as if we’d punched through a wormhole.

It’s a five-star bash at the palace of Versailles - a grand ball - and the air itself seemed to vibrate with a feverish energy. As we bottomed the stairs, something whisked by in the air - was it the ghost of beheaded Louis the 16th?

Naah, it was a multicolored, donkey-headed, Cirque du Soleil creature. They swung everywhere, like gravity defying bugs on silken tethers, ring-swings and thin, web ropes. They flew, tumbled, unicycled, breathed fire and were shot out of cannons like fodder - all against a prismatic sunset backdrop.

A surprisingly chill Parisian wind clawed at our costumes of silk and broadcloth finery. The sun, a bright pink and yellow crack, low on the horizon, cast long, dramatic shadows on the flourish of chaos, as people arrived.

As night asserted itself, light became a living entity, blooming and dissolving in a mesmerizing multicolor-laser ballet that bathed the milling, costumed throng in fluorescent kaleidoscopes of kool-aid colors.

The day before, we had final costume fittings, earlier on the day, we had our hair and makeup done by artists who specialized in 17th/18th century styles (like we’d have known the difference).

From the salon, we were valeted, from Paris, directly to a ‘theme studio,’ setup in the Grand Trianon (the small, side palace where Napoleon lived in the summer) where, for €250 each, we got 10 glam shots on an elaborate, fantasy set.

Then we were escorted to the ‘Extravagant’ (a VIP area next to the stage) - passing through the envious glares of queued, lesser mortals.
‘Ahh, Privilege’, I thought, smiling brightly and waving royally - ‘just like Marie Antoinette used to do it.’ (before being angrily beheaded).

In the heart of the masquerade, tables fairly groaned under a buffet to shame the Roman emperors. There were open bars where rivers of martinis, champagnes and chocolates, the very essences of the celebration, flowed freely.

Elaborately constructed, elevated stages of polished aluminum pulsed music and life. LED light-panels painted fleeting hieroglyphs on the crowd, teasing the edges of perception and bands performed their own sonic wave-magic, swamping the crowd along in currents of booming, euphoric, Frenchcore club-music.

Dance, dance, dance, rest. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a more delightfully fragrant crush of humanity.
Our gilded, white clothed table was an island where we could retreat for cooling refreshment. I have two important words for you 'watermelon martinis’ - you’ll thank me later.

Versailles decadent past was alive that night. It was a young crowd, in general, so, of course, G was there, with Molly, K and Ice - but we were, like, ‘no thank you very much’. In several areas, costumes became fairytale slithers, as partiers became increasingly uninhibited.

After about four hours we caught the ‘exclusive’ light show (Hollywood bathed in unclothed decadence) before moving, weary limbed as zombies, toward the whispered promise of breakfast.

About 45 limousine-minutes later, waiting tourists and a crowd of locals outside a posh Paris restaurant hushed as we passed, colorfully costumed, like ghosts of an indulgent, hedonistic past - to our reserved table.
“Quatre, café et croque monsieur, s'il te plaît,” I told the waiter (four coffees & breakfast sandwiches, please).

I’ll admit to being a bit jaded. I’ve been to more than several ‘Parisian Haute-Couture Extravaganzas” but Lisa seemed genuinely impressed and I think the boys (Peter and David) had fun too. I was lavished with kudos as if I’d thrown the thing.

The atmosphere had been pure romance - in an upscale, Disney, mass produced sense and while it was, perhaps - like last summer's trip to the Ascot races - something not to be missed, it was also a one-time fling - something to look back on - when we’re 40 or whatever.

The Eiffel Tower stabbed at a midnight
as blue as an old Muddy Waters track.
From a distance, its lace-iron skeleton
looked like a slick and oily spider-web
crowned with a glittering neon diamond.

(My Grandmère's home is across the street from it).
“Do you want to go climb it?” I’d asked Peter (my bf).
“Naah,” he’d replied, “too crowded - what’s next?”
We’ve been tourist-ing all of the big Paris sights.

As we night cruised the Seine, the rivière looked dark
and perilous - a phthalo-green snake slithering north
westerly at six times the speed of the Nile.

We took a guided tour of the Louvre - it’s a crowded
fortress and you can’t see the Mona Lisa up close.
We day-toured the palace at Versailles, with its ghosts
of past grandeurs and revolutionary, royal beheadings.

The Arc de Triomphe is just an unsafe round-about.
As we Uber’d around it, I turned to Peter saying,
“Joke time: What’s more dangerous:
a shark or an American driver in a Paris traffic circle?”

I am tired, and I am tired of making it beautiful.  Petals flung over the edge do not soften the fall. Adjectives do not halt decay. Spinning corpses in sugar is a sticky, pointless ordeal. If I let the moonlight paint me in all her violet shades they begin to look more like bruises. A single star, a gunshot wound. I think about how small I must look from all the way up there. I think about how I won’t live past twenty.

It’s such a dramatic scene, a fanciful notion ripped from the history books by a girl who doesn't know how she’ll fit into them. There was one like her before, who dug her palms into the rails and stared out at her burning Versailles, and she wondered how it could be so cold when there was so much light. Another kisses her daughter and son’s shining cheeks goodnight, sits on the tiled floor of the kitchen with her head in the oven. There was the one who painted and broke, loved and broke, painted and loved and shattered and broke. The other flies all her life and goes down at Howland, sinks for its remainder. All of them, statues with shards of rose colored glass transfixed in their eyeball sockets.

Maybe we were made to be romantic and lovely and tragic. Maybe we have no choice but to carry these diamonds and bleed from the backs of our ankles, streak the pavement rose red. Maybe we were destined to scar everything we touch, for what is beauty without pain?

I’ll paint my nails and bite them to the beds, I’ll **** boys who are cruel by design. I’ll spin endless corpses, spin relentless circles in this frigid corner of mine.

versailles has been waiting for your return
this time you will be reborn
out of bitter tears and infant screams
you have been baptised
and now the light of apollo will be in your eyes

the squinting girl will return
but now you are a lion-heart boy
and the twelve years that have passed for them
is twelve hundred for you!
versailles has been waiting
and you will go back