The Sad Story of Waded Cruzado and her Battle Against Fading Falsities, Don Zirilli

Amethyst SunsetAmethyst Sunset, Z.Z. Wei

 

 

The Sad Story of Waded Cruzado and her Battle Against Fading Falsities

Lucy I cried
in the chamber of unplayed drums
before the endless chasing of Barbara Eden
through connected dressing rooms,
watching myself leave as I enter
small green rooms with vases of hopelessly cut flowers,
on the chair a paperback,
a novel or Dr. Spock, it hardly mattered.

Lucy I cried,
how did we all get the same room
and did I ever tell you about Waded Cruzado,
how far she got, why she ever tried.

I am a racist, Lucy,
my blood is brown,
my dark heart is so big
no amount of blondes can fill it.
How to get light to the floor of a sea cave.
How to get Waded to swam.

For me to tell you how she did it, Lucy,
you who are dead to bongos,
you who have ears but cannot Spanish,
to tell you of the journey of Waded Cruzado,
how sand can be music,
how the beach can be a photograph
developed by the sea
because we were so purely dark to ourselves.

Lucy I cried,
I made myself again
while that photograph rots into shoreline,
just another seductive coast,
Waded Cruzado,
she is nothing to me now,
even her name means to cross something
without ever going in.

We all sound alike,
we all cry Lucy,
we are nothing without MacGillicuddy,
a nothing we crave,
conspiring in castanets,
our disastrous longing to be bereft,
but you didn’t see the bereft I came in on,
Coke bottles tied together with my hair
where I opened up so far
that land seemed like a prison,
where I had almost touched the shiny things
you think you want to be.

Oh Lucy,
you have no idea what your tears can almost do,
or you’d be terrified.

__________
Don Zirilli

 

 

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