Zelda and Ziegfeld

Zelda and Fitzgerald
Ziegfeld and Brice
Gershwin, Gatsby, the glam-
our day, New York's day of writers,singers, songs
that en-veloped a city's craze, its 
hidden spaces. When Millay
lived poetry
and Greenwich recited Millay,
that place, before the fall,
before the wall,
crumbled-
Know it?

When lights
took the town,
New York
surprised stood up tall,
glowing golden-green, its money,
it morals-
What morals? - None to be seen, and funny
girls reigned there too -
New York

Supreme - Jolson was the Jazz man
and Ol' Man River supplied
a feeling of an endless summer
flowing freely as wine, free as muse
could speak - whispering low -
speak it slow, speak it easy;
intertwining a bootlegged sound,
a bobbing, roaring laughter
roaring twenties
across town
New York

 As Art Deco fed on Nouveau
melting, morphing concrete curves straight
and empires built reached for the sky,
its limits, skirts shorten higher,
floors lengthened,
time buzzing, life flying,
flew by -
New York

No warning
the song, the writers just past
never meant for us to meet, never meant to last.
Leaving words, and rhythms, places, photos
without faces, where we stand -
In want of what won't come again, that
New York
to late, my friend
not here,
not soon, not twice,
that New York
not again,
not

This Side of Paradise ....

bkmackenzie
copyrighted 2010


“I don't want to live. I want to love first, and live incidentally.”
Zelda Fitzgerald

 Written for Letter "Z"  at Alphabe-thursday , click here for more "Z"