Soap Opera Scenes Unpub)

      The Players
 
I. Assa Aatte (1904-70), ethnic Lugbara, herbalist and mother of Idi Amin

II. Phyllis Newman (1933-2019), actress and third wife of lyricist Adolph Green

III. Dancer, actress and famous lifelong atheist Butterfly McQueen (1911-1995)

IV. Maria van Egmont (? - ?) second wife of Dutch painter Jan Steen

 
     Scene I
 
"You're an idiot, Idi," moan’d Mrs. Amin
(which remark bent her bustle and bruis’d her baleen). 
She'd confronted her son near the Stage Door Canteen 
where she'd track’d down her lad with intent to demean, 
after viewing, on telly, "My Sister Eileen," 
an occurrence which none but yours truly'd foreseen.

     Scene II 
 
“You're a madman, mon Adolph," mou’d mean Mrs. Green
(this was early one morn in the Late Holocene).
She had promis’d her husband she'd not intervene
in affairs he conducted with gals named Joline.*
"Let me own up, my dear, why I wax none too keen:
your Swede sweeties are shiksas...and painfully lean."
 
     * In 2014, the 70th most popular name for a girl
in Sweden was Joline.
 
     Scene III
 
"I'm call’d Butterfly," mutter’d the maid (Ms. McQueen).
"I'm no butternut squash -- nor I'm no nectarine.
I'm not orange: more sepia, dipp’d in ondine.
And, though capital dancer and actress pristine,
it's the queen's upstairs maid I play – never the queen.
Shall I ever be free from such racist routine...?"
 
     Scene IV
 
"Janny paints a great scene," pronounced proud Mme Steen. 
"Janny did in his twenties and did as a teen.
Not a few of Jan's paintings are, these days, unseen – 
like the one of an early Dutch bathing machine.
Janny painted in Haarlem but never in Wien.
(As his solvent Jan always selected xylene.)"

 
     Series Finales, Composited 
 
Will this quartet of scenes, cast with soap-op’ra queens,
prove sufficient to fill up celebrity 'zines…?

Sofa-Size Paintings (Unpub)

     # 10 Jan van Eyck's
Giovanni Arnolfini and His Convertible
 

     # 9 Pierre-Auguste Renoir's
Le Dejeuner des Chaise Longue
 
     # 8 Egon Schiele's
Death and the Chesterfield
 
     # 7 Georges Seurat's
Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Davenport 
 
     # 6 Vincent van Gogh's
Starry Starry Sectional 
 
     # 5 Rembrandt van Rijn’s
Balshazzar's Loveseat 
 
     # 4 Paolo Uccello's
San Giorgio e il Daybed
 
     # 3 Henri Rousseau's
Sleeping Settee 
 
     # 2 Pablo Picasso's
Guernicouch
 
     #1 Leonardo da Vinci's
Sofa Lisa

Someday (Unpub)

Someday I’ll wish upon a stile,
while shipwreck’d on some someday isle.
“I swear I’d stroll a someday mile
could I but spy some someday pile.”
 
Someday I’ll see myself on trial
for undertaking something vile.
“I’m innocent! I lack all guile,”
I’ll cry behind my someday smile.
 
Someday I’ll twist some someday dial
and navigate the Someday Nile,
proceeding downstream single file,
avoiding crab and crocodile.
 
Someday, with cousins Kyle and Lisle,
though none of us be Francophile,
I’ll partner with my liver bile:
“They wait for no man (chyme and chyle).”
 
Someday, no longer juvenile,
I’ll shop among the rank and file:
“To market!” In some someday aisle
I’ll rub some genie’s someday phile.
 
Someday I’ll keep a someday file,
belles-lettres in some someday style –
ala Mark Twain, ala Kurt Weill.
(Who’ll snag a Nobel…? Someday, I’ll!)
 
Someday I'll scan its erster teil,
saluting "Sieg Heil!" all the while --
this shipwreck’d on that someday isle.
(If "Heil!"s don't help, perhaps "Bye-bye'll.")