The Guests At This Hotel Poem by Charlie F. Kane

The moon shone bright
And it made the stars hide away.
Marilyn watches form a window
As she makes up her face,
And cries “O, Romeo, O Romeo”
But Romeo does not hear her cries,
But the Phantom of the Opera
Living next door listens silently to her call.
And Jean Valjean is trying to shake off
The remnants of number 24601.

Helen and Paris do not make a sound,
They are afraid of who might hear,
They tried to be heroes once,
Doomed to failure they now lie together in piece.
Poe ties up his shoelaces,
Wishing that he had somewhere to go.
Superman sits in the bar taking no joy in a gin,
He has hung up his cape now the criminals
Have become replace by so-called freedom fighters.

There is a little stage in the bar,
One spotlight and a fog of German Expressionist smoke,
And a piano where Mozart used to sit.
Well Janis Joplin sings for the first hour,
Till she is replaced with Lady Day.
They sing songs of love and loneliness,
Because they know how it feels to be that way.
And all the patrons are shouting
As Cain and Abel strike up a fight,
And Dylan Thomas groans at the noise,
And orders another for the road.

When the noise quiets down
Lennon cleans his glasses
And moves a knight to E4.
To which Brutus moves just a pawn.
Calypso puts a love song on the jukebox,
In the hope that Odysseus will see,
But he has turned his attentions onto little Joan of Arc.
Hidden behind sunglasses the disgraced Jocasta moves in
And pulls up a seat next to Bette Davies.
She strikes a cigarette and Bette asks if she has one spare.

On the balcony above Hamlet looks at the moon
And thinks about his place in this lonely world.
All he can hear is the sound of the TV
That Jim Morrison listens to next door,
And will probably be hearing in all night.
He laughs as he sees Ophelia cradling flowers on the floor.
She thinks he is romantic as she plans her grand gesture
Of unrequited suicide by drowning in their bath.

Down in the kitchens they prepare for the feast,
They sharpen they knives and go looking for a beast.
It takes a lot to fill a crowd,
And they are so many of the patrons of this hotel.
In the restaurant decorated in tasteful reds and golds,
Dionysius eyes up the wine list,
And thinks about getting back to the show.
A voice rises “Excuse me, sir, I think you better be leaving
You are invited with invitation only,
And we can only turn you away if you cannot produce one.”
And I return out of the door,
I walk past an arguing Anthony and Cleopatra,
They cannot decide who should drive the car
And I laugh at how much they look like
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor,
Who I had seen eating a meal not two minutes before.

And as I look up at the moon-filled and star-less sky,
I think that I was pleased to see only a glimpse
Of what curiosities lay in that establishment,
Though I carry the caricature
That van Gogh painted for me.
And I wonder what the purposes could be
When Casanova flicked peas at Leo Tolstoy.
I wonder what the purpose could be,
I can imagine that I shall never see,
And perhaps I should not know.

©Charlie F. Kane