The Forties People

Judy Garland and Van Heflin in "Presenting Lily Mars," Source: TCM

They're Forties people, you can tell
from the sideburns and the Mary Janes,
the patterned dress made seemingly of paper,
the lips so Revlon red.

Van Heflin and Deanna Durbin
couldn't play them,
as they sit in contemplation
of the heavenly sound of bowling pins
where the Fifties people congregate,
a sleeper cell within a sleeper cell
on blue leather stools rimmed with stainless steel,
ashtrays made of glass.

They've learned to be carnivorous with their eyes,
their lips have learned to slouch, their tongues
forgetting everything from Elvis to punk rock,
the clicking blades of jungles are inked upon their backs.

They're too old for bobby sox,
but not quite ready for pinstripes.
Hats, of course, and Chesterfields,
pegged pants and a Kitty Foyle.
There are a million bank fronts they could haunt
but here they stay, red nails and silver cufflinks
at an unsafe, electric distance,
a liquid in their eyes like beaches heaving, sunset glass.

Soon their limbs will caress
the Danish furniture, they will aspire
to the grace of fruit in bowls,
a living wax
that talks a good modern hero
but hears in the Slingerland kit
that punctuates the gait of the Shanghai dame
a lost world that only
pretended to exist,
bereft, now, of all but the sublime.

Here they live, in multi-dimensions,
with brand-new bakelite phones
and a rounded toaster,
within a glow of amber
where they soon will learn to rectify
some errors made out of love.