In Emerald Shadows
Trying to hide in conspicuous places
a night on the town in their false, plastic faces.
Sweetly they sweep through magnificent halls,
top-dollar galas and masquerade balls --
where always the wine is more bitter than sweet,
each girl wishing for love in her ruby-clad feet.
Perhaps scarecrows are thoughtful, and lions are brave,
and the tin-men know passion, such a boisterous parade
of hopeful young suitors, each waiting his chance
to find a young lady and win her last dance.
All tied up as prisoners with satin-silk chains
they listlessly dance as the hope from them drains.
A piano-man plinks only on the black keys:
pentatonic winds on a pentatonic breeze,
still not enough blowing to carry balloons
or to start raining houses from cyclic typhoons.
The evening draws on -- long beyond the moon’s rising,
a faint glinting of green from the city’s disguising
the envious looks in the eyes of the witches
and harsh threatening gales of the wind as it switches.
And no one is happy, none are finding their prize --
no one knows what they want, nor removes their disguise.
So the dancing is pointless, bravado is hollow
no wizardly magic can fix what will follow.
Shallow connections that lead nowhere, and quickly
the ballroom grows quiet, the witches grow prickly
the lions go fleeing, the scarecrows are clueless,
the tin-men don’t care, and that makes them the cruelest
For out in the public, among all the noise
some girls have gone missing -- and so have some boys
and in the dark shadows, all knew what occurred
but they whisper and gossip, and spread what they heard:
that it must have been mutual, it must be alright
they’re both grown adults, let’s not be so uptight.
And thus they all hide, in conspicuous places
enabling the culprits with false, plastic faces.
9/4/16
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