Threepenny Opera

It is the way forward, the light on the path
even when demons have mortgaged our souls.
It is plucking the soulmate with seamless synchronicity,
the one who is simply there and aware

that the universe has performed the wedding ceremony.
It is the one-ticket lottery winner,
the disease that was only a fleeting phantom
on the gray and black diagnostic film,

a pain in the side that decided to leave on the evening train.
Sunrise might come with a heavy price—
a hangover from hell or the end of a plague—
or the sun might simply slide into the sky

for kindness’ sake, no alarums required.
Life is often a threepenny opera,
the silent unfolding of the unsullied orchid,
a grand ball to which no royalty is squired.

It may be a gathering of merry paupers on the green,
the heavenly city without the nuisance of Armageddon time,
a straight shot of pure tequila
without the rim of salt or the taste of bitter lime.

~William Hammett

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Speaking of Mata Hari

Now that I have your attention, I have observations
suitable for the editor of a small-town newspaper.
The sparrow is singing on key

and appears to be in good spirits.
Cumulus clouds are under sail,
and one looks like a whale

happy to have evaded the harpoon.
The woman on the bench is receiving a proposal,
marriage being her destiny because her heart is strong.

We will check in on her many years from now
if that is not too much to ask of you.
The whooping children in the park have grown silent

because their batteries are low and it is afternoon,
allowing the man in the library across the street
to read his mystery novel in peace.

The librarian had satisfactory sex during lunch,
and radio applause from the house next door
leaked through a window when the deed was done.

The timing couldn’t have been better.
This part of the world stage is mostly quiet,
a phrase that doesn't appear in the Bible.

But now that I have your attention,
perhaps we should speak about Mata Hari,
or not, as the case may be.

She was falsely accused of treason,
but the news was buried on page six.
Things have a way of working out.

~William Hammett

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Hedy Lamarr, I Love You

Whipsmart bombshell, polymath queen,
brains and beauty, beauty and pains
projected on the silver but slanted screen.

You parted your black ocean down the middle,
and even Pharaoh wouldn’t cross so pure a line.
Maybe Byron or da Vinci would have some luck

scoring neon pinball tricks in your brain—
pickup poems with a Mona Lisa smile—
while dancing the rest of your bones on the Seine.

You always walked in beauty like the night,
a speaker of truth, an ear for the blind,
Dylan’s sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,

mystical artist, scientific find.
You frequency-hopped around a life well-lived,
inventing and acting and making love to the band,

and yet no one tossed a penny into your busker’s sieve.
The feds grabbed your patent for radar and chips,
but you played it close to the vest with lips

that kissed the juice from Hollywood and Vine—
you—fruit of all fruit, Eden’s divine.
Hedy, I love you, prophet and seer.

You were a thousand years ahead of your time
a thousand behind.
There’s no one who could touch you then,

few today who can hear your rhyme.
I wish I were Byron, da Vinci, or Bob.
We’d have a meeting of minds over Pharaoh’s divide.

That would be enough for me and for now.
Let it be, let it be, this Viennese waltz.
It will be our secret, you lyrical bride.

~William Hammett

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