“Oh no, not again”

     Redundancy, relentlessly recurring
echoes through all the ages.
Scenes, rehearsed billions of years before
and lightyears away,
a recidivating dance unendingly
rehearsed and reprised.

~~~~~~~~~~

An adolescently maladjusted Apollo advances,
exuding pharmaceutically boosted masculinity.
The damsel Daphne, nursing a not-drink drink,
awaits, pondering the recurrent though
of the bowl of petunias,
“Oh no, not again”

The bartender, caressing a relatively clean glass with a
not-so relatively-clean rag,
and reflecting on the senselessness of
mind-dulling repetition,
settles into a remembering rancid with
regrets and remorse.

~~~~~~~~~~

Fools they be. Fate’s lieutenants,
acting under an idiot’s orders.
But which Ahab and which
the White Whale?

~~~~~~~~~~

He snipped and chemically rigged. She barren
and pharmaceutically sedated.
Ardent but uninspired desire purposefully
misinterprets diffidence as surrender.
Resignation’s daughter struggles to make sense of
carnal brutishness.
Needs, artificially almighty, disannul
prudence eroded by tedium.
The forever dance of denouement
dominates the drama

~~~~~~~~~

The Spanish instrument falls silent,
relieved that its once sweet, sensuous voice,
strangled through an electronic obscenity,
            and mauled by overeager ineptitude
is, for a brief respite,
mercifully stilled.

The anti-rhythmic barbarian, after asymmetrically abusing
the most sacred instrument of the human heart,
heads for the head to evacuate, with relief,
the only truly impactful outcome
of the evening,
which contains a mutated strain of bacteria
which will spawn a provincial,
but persistent,
mini plague of
Conch Republic
diarrhea.

~~~~~~~~~~

The evening, the place, and all the players are merely figments
of a demented envisioning, empowered by a
disinterested inevitability.
The ocean of time rolls insensibly on
mauling all it swallows.
The denizens dance their distracted dances
withing its maw,
never experiencing the warmth of the
distancing sun

Defying both myth and reality,
Daphne cannot turn herself into a laurel tree,
Apollo’s ardent adulation will abruptly dissipate.
Cupid’s arrows, leaden or otherwise,
will pass into memories never to
be revisited.
The bowl of petunias will
mutter anew,
“Oh no, not again”

~~~~~~~~~~

A night, a day, a week, a month, what are these
in the great swing of time through the charnels of chaos?
Eternally repeated dramas set in recurringly
mindless absurdity.
Each always tangoes alone.
Passing whisps of dry, dying air.

~~~~~~~~~~

It is completed. She sits unnoticed. Closes her notebook,
sighs, and wonders
why she has more compassion for them than they
seem to have for themselves.
Trading scraps of their humanity for delusion’s
brief respites,
ennui makes desperate fools of them all.

There is nothing more on this her final evening.
It is time to depart this boneyard of humanity.
The island, the bar, the figments will
soon be forgotten.
Another world, somewhere well
beyond Antares, awaits.
Perhaps this next one will be
different.
She has her doubts.

© Earl Smith

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