tonight--surrounded here by tiki flames
and fountains, palm trees languishing the shore
and the primal darkness of the gulf:
the world turns just like a great big wheel
just as the night swirls above the firmament--
stars of spilt ash from God's great bonfire
aeons ago return in the cosmic wind,
prehistoric birds roost in the mangroves--
you can hear them muttering among crickets
and the muted trumpet jazz piped in from
Charley's Cabana.
Two thousand years ago the old story
kicked off, a star, a manger, an innkeeper
and a couple seeking asylum.
Are we any less forsaken now, Son of Man,
cast on the edge of the desert of the great
Babylon? Sprawled on the poolside deck chairs,
our skin illuminated by the day's sun
and the eerie watery glow, the flickering
tongues of the tiki torches, ignored by
the concierge and obeying some
inscrutable impulse to please someone
we do not know--are we any less chosen
to these portents in the sky, these omens,
these signs burning in the ancient night?
Tonight is the night of the great story,
the story of our great belief, here, in
this ring of tiki torches, these palm trees,
these fountains and heated pools, this jacuzzi
bubbling and steaming, this savage night
of ancient birds and loneliness and betrayal--
it is the only story we know, the only story
we tell ourselves, the holiness of
making it through, of wondering, what do
the stars hold for us tomorrow, what do
we do with ourselves until then?
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