Goodbye, Beloved Mother

by Allan Lake

No Juliet, no Romeo can breathe easy

in a world without the essential other.

     Rio Kyoto Paris Glasgow

Makeshift monster lurks with competing

tentacles. Pointless to nibble delights,

drink the wine to prolong being when

hot air is everywhere but we meet and

greet and eat while fiddlers fiddle.

Someone else picks up the bill.

     Rio Kyoto Paris Glasgow

Surely apple was not ever this rotten.

We dined and danced at Rio like bossa

was still nova, which turned out

to be untrue for hosts of corals.

Giant Jesus wept, kept an eye on salsa

party where partners and positions

were traded, were compromised.

     Rio Kyoto Paris Glasgow

At Kyoto after a banquet we wandered

tipsy into a Buddhist temple, stifled

giggles in a Shinto shrine while serial

killers made a killing and cannibals

feasted on roast kid with extra

carbon on the side.

     Rio Kyoto Paris Glasgow

Photos in front of Eiffel Tower. Hamlet

copped a feel of delegate Ophelia before

going down to a swollen river where

waves sang a version of Baby, Come Back.

Fire or flood, there is time to frolic,

to fornicate the well-intentioned.

     Rio Kyoto Paris Glasgow

To go or not to go to Glasgow?

That was a question that should never

have been asked, much less answered

in an indifferent negative. We suffocate

what we lust after in a market-cornering

embrace and collectively finish up,

not at the famed Cathedral to come

clean but in hungover resignation

at indifferent Necropolis next door.

     Dubai, Mother Nature, Dubai.