Celebrity Soap Opera Scenes (Unpub)

      The Celebrities:
 
     I
Assa Aatte, ethnic Lugbara,
herbalist and mother of Idi Amin
 
     II
Phyllis Newman, actress and
third wife of lyricist Adolph Green
 
     III
Dancer, actress and famous
atheist Butterfly McQueen
 
     IV
Maria van Egmont, wife of
Dutch painter Jan Steen
 
     The Scenes
 
     I
“You’re an idiot, Idi,”
moans Mrs. Amin,
which remark bends her bustle
and busts her baleen.
She confronts her young son
near the Stage Door Canteen
where she’s track’d down her lad
with intent to demean
after viewing, on telly,
“My Sister Eileen,”
an occurrence which few
but yours truly’d foreseen.
 
     II
“You’re mad, my dear Adolph,”
moos mean Mrs. Green
very early one morn
in the Late Holocene.
She has promis’d her husband
she’ll not intervene
in affairs he’s conducting
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 70^th most popular
name for a girl in Sweden…? Joline.
 
     III
“I’m Butterfly,” mutters
a mad Ms. McQueen.
“I’m no butternut squash,
nor I’m no nectarine.
I’m not orange. More sepia,
dabbe’d with ondine.
And, though capital dancer
and actress pristine,
it’s the queen’s upstairs maid
I play – never the queen.
Shall I never be free
of such racist routine…?”
 
     IV
“He paints a great scene,”
owns aproud Madame Steen.
“Jannie did in his twenties
and did as a teen.
Not a few of his oils,
nowadays, go unseen --
like that one of an early Dutch
bathing machine.
Jannie started in Haarlem,
And finish’d in Wien.
As a solvent, he always
selected xylene.
 
     Epilogue
Will this quartet of scenes,
plus a few magic beans,
prove sufficient a dish
in celebrity ‘zines…?