Poetry

Gatsby’s Lament

I have come and gone in silk-shirted tragedy.

The willing victim of self illusion.

Adrift in an autumn pool, I see the fate of river-flowers

that wheel and turn in wilted bliss.

Victims and guests and lovers, united

and unaware, in diaphanous, perilous glory.

The Rubies and Tygers set tightly behind my words

help to repel the encroaching, uneven thirds

of deep past, limited present, and inevitable future.

If only the soft nights and smooth jazz

could hold you still, so young and magical

like my greatest dreams of you.

Thin and young and uniformed, I believed

that things would never change.

Life was supposed to follow its unvarying lodestar,

as constant and perennial as a beckoning green beacon,

but you now have another pilot to guide you

through the threatening shoals of lonely city nights

when the stars above Long Island flicker like bedroom lights.

These days worries wander through different shadows.

I don’t know how I let it go that far,

but like Milton’s Satan,

I would rather reign in Hell

than serve in Heaven.

by Brent J. Mitchell