Notes About The Poem
Recently I found an ancient story that in an oblique, yet arguably metaphoric way, addresses our fame-crazed society today and the illusory temptation to find an available feast to gorge on. Barmecide, a wealthy Persian, who, in a tale of The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, invited a beggar to a feast on imaginary food. Such are the limits of celebrity, when it becomes one’s primary goal over excellence in achievement.
Celebrity Dreamscapes
Celebrity Dreamscapes
Washington
Wall Street
Hollywood
Nashville
Where regurgitation overflows
And Barmecidal bait boxes
Morph their delights by the hour
All the while
Gluttony's promised feast
Ignorant of cyclic famine
Awaits the pernicious fate-agent
Scouting to burrow like a weevil
The new crop of innocence
Trusting destiny to the winds of chance
Confident redolent success smells
French perfume
Garlic enhanced delicacies
Fresh tanned leather of opulent travel
Are theirs to have
How fragrant the illusory air becomes
The temperature of anticipated fortune's shift
Where once a round-shouldered indigent freshman pounded doors
Now seemingly triumphant
Unknowingly erect as a naked rose stem
With yesterday's portent of rich reward
Rapidly sheds its petals
Mulch for tomorrow's next planting
How fleeting the enigmatic feast of notoriety
Time's incumbent qualification
For re-introducing innate principals
Cautioning today's attention
Is but a requisite for tomorrow's elusive truth
Yet
Fearful of fruitless coming years
Too few embrace cognizance over
Fading Klieg lightsParty snubs
Absent red carpet entrances
A maître d's forgetfulness
Yes
The harvesting of one's experience
Might suffer drought and winds
Scattering past efforts
To but memories of dust
Rather than priceless benchmarks
To reveal the authentic self
Yes
Such a disposition may well make "Being" difficult and distant
Where the "take a number and be seated" readout at DMV
May well become a feared test
Where waiting
Becomes a ticking-off-process
Asking if one can hold onto the simpler distant past
Those surprising coming-of-age sensations
The first time rewards of libations' survival
The generous thank you once felt by the first kiss
And yes...
One's elation upon receiving that first driver's license
We think
We review
We ponder "what price" aspiration
Ambition
So often blind to trickery
Frequently stumbles upon start marks
Not meant to be
Distant finishing lines
Not meant to be reached
Still
One can take a number
And eventually hear one's name called
To be who you are...
Or not
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