A 'new' poem of NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND

Another melodic Drunken night in NEWPORT, R.I.

On Thames Street
last octaves of sky
give way to purple ribbons
hot nightly phrases.
A curtain of thick fog laughs
at ‘wannabe’ sophisticates
wrapped in false environmental mist.
To befit their ‘position and stature’
ensconced in manses on Belleview Avenue
these polyphonal participants
gather to be spotted or seen.
Fishing trawlers bump against barnacled moorings
as i lurch from lamppost to lamppost
in the hopes to find some rest
for this desire for yet another tequila shooter.
Charmless sounds cloy and suffocate
like those caught belowdecks in a 3-metre skiff
buffeted by a vivacissimo of a sudden squall
while William Vanderbilt
grand-son of the ‘Commodore’
sleeps it off on a bench of ‘Dos Yanquis’.
A real ‘Mexicano’ restorante
pleasuring all with ‘blue daiquiris’
where arabesques of refrain and melody
join the blare from a passing cruise ship.
As the owner/manager Paul J. contemplates divorce
in bluesy bittersweet tangled energy
from his wife who has given him two children
and $1400dollars a month in magazine bills.
The restorante resonates as a double-reed fog horn
bellows from the Goat Island lighthouse
with tones of expressive power
as images bounce back and forth in my drunken haze
where Mrs. Caroline Skelly the ‘Sun Oil heiress’
aka ‘The Mole Woman’
[because of horrible disfigurement
that set her head on fire in a beauty salon]
sups with Mrs. Anita Hamilton
you know ‘tanned’ George’s mom –
they look enough alike to be twins
while both Mrs. Hamilton and ‘Mole-Woman’ wear
sable furs worth more than the income of Newport’s
subsidized ‘poor’ population.
Muted cello swatches combine
in slidechorals of horns from passing Canada geese
flying low and steady
adding to this smaze of nocturn
coalescing into super-rich string strains
and T. Curtis Forbes of the proper Forbes famille
conjugates his social status with incredible ‘bloodlines’.
Good-looking ‘Poturgai’ waitresses
a liedertafel chorus of gulls
fidgety feathered coloraturas
accomplish various sex acts
in the seedy bathrooms.
Always careful to ‘wipe’ themselves
before the next customer or nightly aggressive scherzo.
All wish to be centerstage
in this musical creation epic
hungry for scraps and scales.
Tunes eminate from the ‘Blue Pelican Jazz Club’
up near the new police station
and a single flute of a windsong intermission
signals the relaxing vapors
of the good-smoked herb spead far into
the melodies of another hot drunken night.