Fiver

Chattering Class

Self-appointed arbiters confabulate
and descant over cabernets, bloviating
as if they’ve a clue what they’re talking about
(but certain their views ought to be obvious
to the intelligent of our world),
as if the prattle of jabberers were
erudite sonnets slipping trippingly
from the tongues of those in the know.

Discreetly I open a window to ventilate
the parlor, lest I sway then swoon amid
a clique of poseurs putting on airs,
nodding at each other’s claptrap,
toasting unwittingly to their own
gargantuan arrogance and grandiose delusions.

Suffocating, I melt away past the depleted bar
toward the French doors and subtly abscond,
averting the hostile gaze of disapproving eyes,
forsaking the derisory baboonery of aloof fools
hopelessly out of touch with the hoi polloi
(from their vantage, sordid plebeians),
often in error yet seldom in doubt,
full of themselves though devoid of sense,
liberal in all matters but tolerance of dissent.

Toulouse-Lautrec at the Moulin Rouge

Semi-crippled by stunted legs, the draughtsman
roams the Champs de Mars and, naughty boy,
peeks up the skirt of the wrought-iron lattice tower
rising skyward as dusk cues his return
and he saunters back to his stomping grounds,
Montmartre, to haunt its cafés, cabarets,
nightclubs, and bars, becoming such a fixture
in the pleasure palaces of le gai Paris that he seems
a part of the furniture, drawing as he drinks,
while the floorboards of gaslit stages groan
and creak beneath high-kicking cancan dancers.

By day he hobnobs with Van Gogh or Degas,
but nightly he gulps and observes fellow sensualists
indulging in the bohemian life, bon vivants
who share his taste for the demimonde
with its tempting strumpets and hard liquor;
his fetish for auburn-haired sirens impels him
to frequent brothels until soon he inhabits one,
a strange arrangement easing his urge to befriend
its denizens, which comes at the cost of syphilis.

Wild living can’t keep him from his craft and fame
will be his thanks to pioneering poster work,
though he dreams of the theatre, opera, circus,
arenas of spectacle, fora of imagination,
each better still than the booze that afflicts him
with delirium tremens; at length he finds himself
quivering behind locked doors at a mental hospital,
brushstroking his way to freedom, and senses
his end, nearing and premature, grateful to be
relieved of wracked body and mind, sorrowful to bid
adieu to what have proven to be, at least in his case,
the solacing excesses of La Belle Époque.

About the Author
Brandon Marlon is a writer from Ottawa, Canada. He received his B.A. in Drama & English from the University of Toronto and his M.A. in English from the University of Victoria. His poetry was awarded the Harry Hoyt Lacey Prize in Poetry (Fall 2015), and his writing has been published in 300+ publications in 33 countries.