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, 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
