Cosmic Suggestion Box
Sometimes the world seems like
a rough draft that never got revised.
Yet what might humankind propose
on its own behalf to the divine playmaker
who scants all knowledge of His nature
among beings yearning yet benighted?
With all due respect, in all humility,
perhaps for starters one could recommend
the nullification of evil and free rein,
whose marriage guarantees injustice
and mocks the assumed goodness of the great?
One could, modestly, advocate
a swift end to natural disasters, cataclysms
indelicately termed by insurers
acts of God, who is, after all,
ultimately responsible even if not culpable.
I, for one, could readily do without
meaningless and undeserved suffering,
meaningless and undeserved struggle,
and the bitter misery these engender.
But, admittedly, it occurs to me that
we ought to refrain from passing judgment
on what we can’t begin to comprehend;
should we not give the benefit of the doubt
to the One from whom we seek the same?
Sometimes I wonder whether the one thing
that the Creator can’t possibly know
is what it’s like to be only human…
Polite Company
Well, of course you crave an invitation
to our soirées, whose rarified atmosphere
hosts only the hoi aristoi
(that’s optimates to vulgar Romanophiles),
a caviar audience comprising
the moneyed and well-heeled,
white-shoe financiers and philanthropists,
literati and cognoscenti
(plus the culturati who worship them),
the smart set and intelligentsia
whose right-thinking bien pensants
determine for inferiors the bon ton
and boundaries of civilized opinion.
Pretenders who seek an entrée
to our exclusive salons and
desperately aspire to join the gentility
(highbrow snobocracy, if you insist),
must ever adhere to orthopraxy,
eschew all manner of gaucherie,
and utter only the effable while
in the presence of the elite,
sophisticates whose refined
sensibilities and feelings are fragile.
Naturally, we must turn away many
to admit the very select few;
perhaps in good time you’ll prove
clubbable, fashionable, acceptable,
though I’d recommend low expectations
to mitigate crushing disappointment.
And, yes, since you’re wondering anyway,
the cocktails and canapés are to die for.
Toulouse-Lautrec at the Moulin Rouge
Semi-crippled by stunted legs, the draughtsman
roams the Champs de Mars and, naughty boy,
peeks up the skirt of the wrought-iron lattice tower
rising skyward as dusk cues his return
and he saunters back to his stomping grounds,
Montmartre, to haunt its cafés, cabarets,
nightclubs, and bars, becoming such a fixture
in the pleasure palaces of le gai Paris that he seems
a part of the furniture, drawing as he drinks,
while the floorboards of gaslit stages groan
and creak beneath high-kicking cancan dancers.
By day he hobnobs with Van Gogh or Degas,
but nightly he gulps and observes fellow sensualists
indulging in the bohemian life, bon vivants
who share his taste for the demimonde
with its tempting strumpets and hard liquor;
his fetish for auburn-haired sirens impels him
to frequent brothels until soon he inhabits one,
a strange arrangement easing his urge to befriend
its denizens, which comes at the cost of syphilis.
Wild living can’t keep him from his craft and fame
will be his thanks to pioneering poster work,
though he dreams of the theatre, opera, circus,
arenas of spectacle, fora of imagination,
each better still than the booze that afflicts him
with delirium tremens; at length he finds himself
quivering behind locked doors at a mental hospital,
brushstroking his way to freedom, and senses
his end, nearing and premature, grateful to be
relieved of wracked body and mind, sorrowful to bid
adieu to what have proven to be, at least in his case,
the solacing excesses of La Belle Époque.
Author’s Biography
Brandon Marlon is a writer from Ottawa, Canada. He received his B.A. in Drama & English from the University of Toronto and his M.A. in English from the University of Victoria. His poetry was awarded the Harry Hoyt Lacey Prize in Poetry (Fall 2015), and his writing has been published in 320+ publications in 33 countries.
