Dance, Zelda, Dance

The life of the party,
The belle of the ball
Catches the blood
Shot eye of a writer
Drunk at the club
With words germinating
Like wildflower seeds
In tilled soil of mind,
While a patch of homespun
Manure matures in his soul
Where gold saplings spring.

Thinking a dollar bred
In Alabama
More or less carries
Its weight in New York
His is a mission to win
The hand of the original
Flapper with a bounty
Of pleasure shaking
Underneath draped
Eggshell silk and a purse
Full of sustenance.

Zelda under a cream
Cloche hat baring her ankles
Above her Mary Jane shoes.
Scott in Brooks Brothers attire,
His hair greased and parted
Smartly in the middle.

Lovers skip lightly
On glittery concrete
With bootleg booze
Flowing and pagan jazz
Blowing all hours
Of the New York City
Night where promises
Are vomited by dawn
With only “he said, she said”
Theatrics all anybody
Remembers of the soiree.

Some say he was jealous
Of other men looking
At his woman as their own.
Some say she was jealous
Of him taking her words
As art of his own.
The constant being the copious
Amounts of alcohol consumed
By gimlet green eyed monsters.

I say that any one who denies
One's art defiles one's soul.

Professional love overflows
Like shaken champagne
For the man of letters
While Zelda's art sits
Stifled and ridiculed
Despite the long
Hours of solitary toil.

Tattered sheets
Of inspired scribble
At her swollen and blue
Feet as she collapses
Onto herself like the pink
Petals of a day lily
Withering into
Shadows of evening.

In a sepia
Sadness she dances
Through the hallway
From room to room
Visiting the denizens
Of dreams gone awry.

Practicing the waltz
Step of the ballet
Till her toes bruise
Purple as the blooming
Rhododendrons outside
Sanitarium windows
By the shadows
Of Mount Beacon.

Looking for the spark
Of revelation to engage
The gears of creativity.
The line between
Brilliance and insanity
Quivers as questions
Of a man's fidelity and truest
Intentions ignite till there
Is nothing but ash and art.
The only love left to live for.

The last chance for redemption.
For meaning, for immortality
In a masterpiece to ward
Off the finality of a mosaic
Menial in bits of banality.
Dancing, drawing, writing
In an abyss. In a cell
Barren but for the blood
And sweat of a dream that will
Never die as her ghost
Pirouettes faster and faster
In flames of borrowed hell.
Dance, Zelda, Dance.