The French Whore Who Would Not Sing

When she opens her unsmiling red painted lips

I expect to hear a song in French

Something sultry, contralto,

“Tu es mon amour,

mon coeur, mon tous,

mon avenir et mon passé.”

But she sings in a nasal soprano

without soul, something modern.

It’s an English faux dirge

Filled with what passes for class

But with its knickers showing,

Pale angst included.

Where’s the usual piano man?

The piano accompaniment is tinny,

The old piano sounding as weak

As a bleached soul molested by strange hands.

Someone I don’t know plays a muted trumpet

and again the music is faded;

A foggy black and white whisper

Compared to the usual bright color.

The young couple next to me is enchanted

By the Orchid Room so maybe it’s just my mood.

They smile the bright luminous smiles

of oblivious and self-absorbed young love.

I bury myself in the music and Brass Monkey

And wait, remembering being young

And in oblivious, self-absorbed love.

I’m waiting for a reason

But it escapes me.

Perhaps I’m waiting for some contralto to sing

Something sultry in French;

“Tu es mon amour,

Mon coeur, mon tous,

Mon avenir et mon passé.”

I have to laugh at myself.

Tonight I am my own illusion,

Sans Absynthe.

Seriously, aren’t we all?

La grande illusion

dans le grand jeu de vie.

None of my friends are here tonight?

The bartender winks and I’m able to smile.

Mamu nods at me knowingly

As the blue smoke, itself an old friend,

swirls its tendrils in the air around me.

When the pale music is quiet

I can hear the hum of familiar voices

Lifting in laughter and conversation

in the back room past the noise of the room

past Mamu’s broad shoulders.

Sweet, deadly Mamu, the human door.

Are they playing at billiards or cards?

Playing in the room of mirrors?

Usually I would join in.

But everyone has their own agenda tonight.

Sitting alone is mine.

Perhaps I am playing the sultry

French whore who would not sing.