Amongst the Crowd

Amongst the Crowd - a reading (on YouTube)

We don our disguises and pretend to be someone genuine and new,

Lurkers at the threshold peering in with the eyes of a predator.

Our razor-cut, Sokka-styled host greets us at the door

Beside a pile of shoes like a Holocaust sorting station.

High-heeled pretense lies abandoned poolside.

A brief, surficial stillness reflects the evening sky.

Bowed notes glide effortlessly along the water

The caress of cat-silk across the bridged body of a doll.

Screens of bamboo, brown, bound and horizontal,

Vibrant, vertical and green, whisper susurrant secrets

That send chimes of iridescent laughter twinkling on the twilight breeze.

Fireworks of orchids burst beneath the nightshade of an arbor.

There is chemistry to these gatherings, a primal alchemy,

An iron cauldron stirred by a trio of green-skinned Kalis

Smiling Mona Lisa seductions to reveal too much

Or be forever shunned in silence.

Connections, brief and enduring, form in the universal solvent of alcohol,

The swell and lull conversations stirred by the aqua blue catalyst of the pool.

Marital bonds dissolve for the preferred valence of male to male, female to female.

Pairings reconfigure as exchanges are interrupted by commingling Brownian motion.

Eyed by long-faced masks that peer from every dark and tribal palm,

I am an unstable isotope that drifts through the night alone.

While from his secret alcove buried deep within the garden,

A smiling, torch-lit Buddha reminds me who I am.


© 2013 Edward P. Morgan III