He knew then that he had lost it,
couldn’t recall the name of the star
even when looking at the familiar face
on the screen.
            Remembered to come in on time,
turn on the TV to the remembered channel,
recording the film he remembered would start then.

‘Sun Dance And Billy The Kid?’ ‘Bob Newhart?’

He had sat in the star’s car in Westport,
a Porsche Spyder disguised in a Beetle body.
He’d talked twice with the star’s wife at parties
in the loose rhythms hip people affected,
all playing their bits, their parts,
getting down
in alligator shirts with long tails
and Madras Bermudas that really ran
when washed.
            Watched the star (‘Robert?’)
get his fingers broken with a pool cue by Fat Jack,
in those black-and-white films they called
‘movies’ then — there, in Fairfield County
where small planes flew low on weekends
and sprayed the big houses and lawns
with Beefeater London Distilled Dry Gin.
            ‘Don’t mix, stir twice,’
some bonding idiocy (‘James?’)

Drinking nine bone-dry martinis,
then crashing the road-closed signs
in what seemed a slow and controlled drift,
one toppled concrete signpost spearing
the roadster’s floor plate but missing
his star-crossed foot. Sparing him.

Know a good lawyer? Have the name yet?

‘Paul’ something. Sounds ecumenical. The
good pope, sort of human (‘John?’) hadn’t lived
long in office. Nor had the Camelot king
who ruled for the best and the brightest.

Twenty minutes into the film, and he still
can’t recall it: the name of that Star.

He climbed the wall to see the stars
a strategy that failed.

He could go out, he knew he could,
though doing so entailed

exposure to a giant gnu and an
agnostic goose that sailed

the atmosphere emitting drear
and gnomic honks.    He railed

against his fate and went out late.
By then the stars had paled.

While swallows bring the evening to this air
and draw the curtains clouding late-day sun,
one blackbird serenades you in your chair.
He celebrates the beauty I have sung
in wintry walks along the cold North Sea.
He sings to you this summer eve in France
and I sit quietly by. I’m half in shade
and all in love, as when I saw you dance
into my sight and heart. I quite agree
he adds cachet as we sit vis-à-vis:
a vesper for provincial promenade.

I woke up early this morning. Don’t ask why.
I always do these days that we must duel.
This time I have the buckler. You have the sword.
I say, the way one does, goodbye to life,
and we engage. Good gods! The blade is cold.

A random act of meanness was crossing swords
with an angel of good intentions. Guess who lost.
I am having trouble deciding. They’d had words.
and things had escalated when one tossed
the other’s mother’s name in. Reason blurred.
Swords flashed. I saw the loser’s name embossed
by blade point on his forehead. I strained trying
to read. I failed because the light was dying.