A Solitary Fire
In bobby socks the teenyboppers used
To sigh or scream about a baritone,
Or tenor, or falsetto voice. Amused,
Their objects of desire jived through a zone
Of smugness like a phoenix on its pyre.
Before these screeching fans, young James Strachey hunched
In front of uni lodgings’ mopey fire
And dreamed of Rupert. Strachey, sitting scrunched
Like Wile E Coyote, gasped alone in
Sucked out ruination love. He sat
In love’s paralysis. Serotonin
Left Strachey slumped like Wile E.’s flattened splat. . .
..And did the poet care? No, not one jot.
….The love of James was just a desert blot.
~ Phillip Whidden
