Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Cleopatra reads T Magazine

 

- Karen Chamisso

“Where’s the soothsayer you praised so to the queen?”
Holed up in the Chateau Marmont
Our Cleo sprawls and bawls and dreams of shawls
And gazes at the latest scream
Of Paris fashion in T magazine.
Does she have a future? Does she even have a past?
To cheer herself up she clicks the “Daily Shoe”
And goes through her favorites: a bit of a blast
In brocaded boots from Stella McCartney
And jeweled Mary Janes from some London party
But this is not how Thursday should go
Un-Anthonied, untexted, floating in icy water
Like some orphan ice floe
Instead of the Exterminator Pharaoh’s daughter
- this is no way to kill time. Sexless, drugless,
or practically. Which is the why for the visit
from her favorite occult-ist, whose Tarot
will get her “out of her own way”
and into another zone and frequence
where click click click she’ll construct a sequence.
Emblemes anciennes she displays, on engravèd cards
Shuffles forth the mountebank and the Spanish Captain.
Sweet Alicia, make me a good fortune
To which she smiles and sez: I make not, but foresee
Your epoch is the mountebank’s totally
But look: the tower struck by lightning comes next!
Disaster will fructify your waste of time
For there is no waste really – the world’s a horder
There’s nothing ever missing in the end.
That’s five hundred bucks, my special friend.
Cherish the time that you waste, for it is true
That this is what time will finally do to you.

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