Night Movie, 1939
after Edward Hopper
They come here
to shuck off
the day’s despair
and leave it
with their fake furs and trilbies
in the cloakroom
with the hat-check girl.
These seekers of ecstasy
in our gilded Cathedral of Dreams.
Devout believers
in the doctrine of happy endings.
Followers of the Hollywood gospel
that teaches the good guys
always get their gals,
and bad men never prosper.
Their faces aglow
with breathless adoration
for their idols,
their celluloid idols.
Those false gods
that are nothing more
than beguiling flickers of light
on a silver screen.
An optical delusion
that will make the dark
much darker still
when later they leave
and step out
into the city night.
Hotel Lobby, 1943
after Edward Hopper
We saw her in the lobby,
the honeymooner, waiting
for her husband, yet again.
She was reading a feature,
How to Keep Your Man.
I could have saved her time.
Forty years have taught me
it’s not the Monroe hair
or the flattering high heels,
or the busty blue dress
that matters most.
The secret is the skin.
I could have told her
to throw away her lotions,
creams and moisturisers.
Let irritations and frictions
thicken and harden it.
When calluses grow
don’t pumice them away.
Let them amass
until they make a leather case
to preserve a fragile heart
from lies
and insensitivities
petty jealousies
and infidelities.
Then
she might endure
a marriage
as long as mine.
Trial
An angry heat
hot enough
to boil the sea,
turn sand to glass.
Even sunworshippers,
questioning their faith,
shun the beach.
and the ever-present
stall holder abandons
trade for shade.
The only life, a lizard
skittering, unseen, across the road
as if treading burning coals
to placate Nature’s rage.
Flights, Issue Fourteen, November 2024
Flight of the dragonfly 