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by Jenny "Lady Caroline Lamb" Krasner
Let us go then you and I,
When the evening is impossible to see because of all the pollution and
skyscrapers
Lacking patience as we etherize our neighbors;
Let us go through certain midtown mob-filled streets,
The alcoholics’ retreats
Of restless nights at the Salad Astoria
And totally over priced restaurants with crappy wine lists:
Streets that follow like the tedious argument of
Should we have gone into Iraq and killed a ton of people even though no other
country
supported us except England and given that, here, I think we’re all in
trouble…exception made for the Swiss Delegation present…
To lead us to an overwhelming question..
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Just eat, drink and piss it.
In our rooms the B.S. comes and goes
Discussions of one another’s prose.
And indeed there will be wine
For drinking in obscene innuendoes in the browser windows
For obscenities rubbing muzzles behind the computer screen
There will be wine, there will be wine
To help prepare a face to read the raucous musings that we speak
There will be wine, for murder and creation
And wine will lick its tongue into the corner of my mouth
Linger upon my thigh and trickle down my fishnets,
Wine for you and wine for me,
And wine to help a hundred indecisions,
Procrastinating hundreds of our visions and revisions,
Before we finally say, “Shit, I guess this will do, I wasn’t planning on
writing a poem
anyway.”
In our rooms the B.S. comes and goes
Discussions of one another’s prose.
And indeed there will be time
To whine, ‘Should I have told Raymond that?’ and ‘Should I have confided in
Chris?’
Time to turn back and realize – when I get e-mails from Uma who told me that
Danny
told her something he heard from Richard who heard from Raymond past on through
Karen that I told Chris and now she’s totally pissed at me…
With a grey hair in the middle of my head-
(They will say: ‘God she has a big mouth!)
My Prada dress so perfectly tailored,
My Gucci bag and matching Manolo Blaniks-
(They will say: ‘But when will she tell us more!)
Should I have told them? I have never known such voracious gossipers!
Should I have disturbed the universe?
In a minute there is time
Time to realize I can say whatever the fuck I want.
In our room the B.S. comes and goes
Discussions of one another’s prose.
And would all our efforts have been worthwhile,
After the alcohol, the lamb, la mousse au chocolat,
Among our beautiful attire, among our pithy drunken comments,
Would it have been worthwhile,
To have had such a tiff about god knows what,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile, (like that was ever going to
happen)
But…to have squeezed our universe, which is right here, into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: ‘I am Lady Caroline Lamb,
Come down from the Upper West Side,
Come to this dinner to tell you all, I shall tell you all’ –
(well…O.K., anyway!!!! Whatever…)
I grow old…I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my Prada’s rolled,
Do I need to get my hair died? Do I dare another half double decaffeinated half
caf latté?
I shall wear a motorcycle jacket and drive up and down the West Side Highway.
We have lingered in the dining halls here and across the sea
By our dear friends clad in black and white and sometimes other colors and tone
Till the waiters kick us out and we head home.