Between the Age of Enlightenment and the age
of thirty, I lost my way. Disappointment

scuttled down the breezeway. Ennui stretched out
across several white wicker chairs. 'Beauty,
closely apprehended, breeds fear,' I told myself

by way of reassurance. 'Then sorrow, then loneliness.'
Then I felt better. Poor L.A. Where could one turn

without running into a pink-tinted martini,
a kiss on each cheek, that hankering that follows
the hankering for gin? Oh, for an ice cube

and something to plunk it in! I lip-read the director
as his leading lady tucks into the duck pate,

the duck canapes. 'The world's too twilit,'
he seems to say, 'too black and white.' The yellow
bowl of arugula sits unnoticed off to one side.

Who loves lettuce? But Hoagy Carmichael does
a funny thing at the piano and my heart

swings open like a Murphy bed. Now a hint
of stale Nag Champa tickles my nose, or is this
Chanel No. 5 letting go of someone's taut tan wrist?

I know no one wears it anymore. Things change-
we'll always have that. 'I liked it better,'

someone says, 'when the world was flat.'
That someone is me. 'I agree with everything
you've ever said or thought in your life.'

Me again, but headed home. Ma petite amie,
Jeanne D'Arc, rolling over like a wheel of cheese-

what are you doing still up and smoking in bed?
Tonight, the stars are quoting the collected
works of Howard Hawks, word for word.

It takes us all night and all morning. We watch
and watch. We drink it in like gin.