Conversation

Through the mist of alcoholic fumes,
The Interpreter's voice
Entered the Actor's cochlea
A poem from the forgotten past;
A few swear words
Thrown at unvindicated challengers.
The city roared past them
Beyond the border of the broken footpath.
The dogs slept blissfully.
The clock ran late.
The stream of sentences broadened into an Amazon
Now growing branches and tributaries.

The Actor's face darkened
Blood rushed up to his brain
His eyes shone like storm lanterns
- on a New Moon night.

The Interpreter was floating now
On a sailing boat on the seventh sea
Far away from where the Actor stood
Beside his shadow
Under the neon street lamp
Infested with dead moths.
Beside the ex-model of the formerly famous painter
Now begging for dropped peanuts
Like da Vinci's infant Nazareth Boy;
Only,
His face was free of lines
And his -
A portrait of life.
Shrouded in a tobacco stained beard.

But His face is free of lines, too.
His skin still taut with flawless youth.
(With flawless Anger?)

The nicotine receptors in the hypothalamus
Get slowly overwhelmed.
The Interpretor's invisible voice
Gets dimmer now
The connection between two human souls
Via a satellite link
Gets weaker now.

The stars shine dimly down
On a tired city.
Its denizens sweating like
Pigs and horses,
Pack into last buses
- to get home.

The conversation reaches its climax.
The Actor nods his final agreement.
He's young,
too young
His knowledge too less
His experience even lesser
- perhaps;
He looks up to the Eucalyptus:
An olive green silhoutte
Against an orange-blue sky.
Swaying,
Swaying in the southern breeze
Its thin long leaves
Spiralling quadrilles.
Its the coolest.
Its long fair body
Shall never wrinkle with age.

Time passes
The denizens return home.

The Actor and the Interpretor
Walk back into their minds
The strings between them scissored out.
They walk so,
Now lost.