Shadow Theatre

1: Prelude

You called me maudit beau Armand.
I called you Babylon.
You whispered “Fuck me baby.”
I tried to hum along.

2: Opening Narrative

The church of St. Jerome des Ombres
Burned to the ground in ninety-eight,
And in its place the city built
Le Grand Theatre des Ombres
An Opera: the Theatre of Shadows.

After the war, the opera gods
Fell into disrepute.
They bowed awhile to Hollywood.
Bright shadows on the screen.
And then the great depression left
The “Shadows” boarded, blind.

3: Fallen ushers

Four decades pass.
We busted in
Just for “le fun”,
And lost a summer,
Wasted in the shadows,
Hiding from the sun.

We were gods and players,
Veterans of the hippie wars.
The coffee houses all shut down.
The poets, fading flowers.

On the balconies, in shadows
The jism flowed like wine.
We toasted to fires of lust,
We drank to our decay.
We wrote the diary of our love
In stains on faded seats.

But most of all we laughed.

4: Last Chorus (Everybody sing)

We sang songs of love and lust
Among the shadows and the dust.
We talked of Dylan and of Marx,
Of anal sex and angels dark,
Of Nixon and his dirty tricks,
Of pool hall cues and guitar licks.

5: Finale

But in the end, in squalid aisles,
With the gutted crypt below,
We were just shadows squatting
On the bones of St. Jerome.