Stanley’s got a champagne high

blanched in the first light of the gray moon.

New Orleans.

Tennessee.

 

Rush of train in an arrival of steam.

Blanche, in whistle mazed confusion,

boards the streetcar named Desire.

Gentleman sailor,

and a street of ragtime jazz.

Elysian Fields.

 

Stella and Blanche in lines of quandary,

bowling– there he…

Story of our–

Leave of absinthe.

And the b. s. transpires.

Trauma of the train station.

Pretty flowers.

Guilt over greed.

And the Pollack sensation

in bed–

Where were you?

 

Tenement scene.

Ongoing argument of daily intent.

Stanley.

Blanche.

Ape man of sweaty dispense.

Blanche of demure quintessence.

Sweaty stench of persistent ignorance.

Sexual domain.

Sentient. Crude.

Echo of the past–

dead flowers

of echoes past.

Sickness of shipped trunks

in the sweaty heat.

 

Hunger of complacent anger.

Grief of anguished sacrifice.

Dead boy, husband.

Tell her she’s pretty.

 

Stanley misunderstands

the infinite complexity

of stillbirth.

 

Stanley,

of concrete discourse

and Napoleonic code.

Stella,

of girlish innocence

and womanly swindle.

Blanche,

white and pure,

ignores and refuses

the obvious evidence

of the grand facade.

Stella upholds.

 

Blanche, en posture,

pretends a new dress.

Stanley chews, disbelieving–

uninvited card game.

“I was once attractive.”

And the cards are on the table.

Cut the rebop

and the zen rap.

Stanley can’t handle confusion.

 

Napoleonic code.

Cards on the table.

Good deal.

A woman’s charm is 50% illusion.

 

Antique love letters

burning of desire.

Dead boy– poems of lost days.

“Give them back!”

They must burn

because of their intimate nature.

 

Endowment of animal papers.

Belle Rev.

And misplaced past.

Two sisters

facing the future

like a ghost of the past.

 

Poker game of thick smoke.

Sisters of contention,

Interrupt the savage male discourse.

“Still got it Blanche.”

The bongo poker puzzlement understands.

 

Suddenly,

a careful stillness

of feminine quiet.

Shuffle of non-descript deck.

Mitch, of subtle dispersion.

An antique inscription.

Dead girl.

Dead boy.

Dead past.

“Sorrow makes for sincerity,”

 

“White woods,”

like an orchard in Spring.

Playful repose of vulgar shadows.

Adaptable circumstance.

 

Frantic old maid school teacher

and gallant knight of remorse.

Solemn cry,

for light of enchantment.

And poker disregard.

Animal glass

of crushed illusion

in shower of cold awareness.

Vinyl ignorance,

white in the dark night of temptation.

Search for mystical completion.

Phone call of desire

and neanderthal shout of existence.

Spiral descent

into primordial depths.

Stella in the sand,

a filigree myth.

City cigarette

of improper dress.

Mitch in the dark of blanched past.

 

A stark new day

falls upon

the matter-of-fact night.

 

Aristocratic crevasse.

Animal nature.

A habit of primitive survival.

“Party of apes.”

Aspect of tangible

and dead heritage

of ape past.

Stanley of mudded sexual beckoning

in the blanched dark stillness.

Sisters part in the stillness,

each to her own instinct.

 

“What was your sign?

Aries?

Capricorn!”

Odor of cheap perfume.

Beneath the neon sign.

The Virgin.

Thunderstorm of dedication

and fear.

Stain of old tears

and cherry soda.

“I love to be waited on.”

 

Gentle blot of the wine stained past,

white dress comes clean.

Respect of the stillborn–

quiet,

proper

stillness

Sisters of bafflement.

Lost– in the subtle seduction.

the sweat of the charade.

Kiss the young boy and make him run.

 

Blanche and Mitch

return from a carnival.

Mitch, shy and mother-ridden.

Blanche lays the foundation

for a new facade.

Virtuous Virgo.

Affectation of demure

and “old fashioned ideals.”

And the story of her dead husband–

in the arms of another man.

How drunk, and laughing,

he stuck a revolver in his mouth

and blew himself away.

“Could it be me and you Blanche?”

“Sometimes,

there’s God–

so quickly!”

 

Stanley lights the fire

for Blanche’s birthday pyre.

Show’s Mitch a newspaper clipping

about Blanche, in Laurel–

And her education of a young boy.

Drummed out of town.

And Stanley aims to set the world straight.

Mitch will not be by.

No tank of sharks for him.

Stanley presents Blanche

with a bus ticket

back to Laurel,

and her begrieved Belle Rev.

And Stella says,

“Stanley, it’s time!”

 

Mitch comes whore calling–

Blanche the beneficiary

of more abuse– declines

the flowers for the dead.

Though only the dead can see

the frightened child that is she.

Mitch wants a payoff

for holding out.

But Blanche screams,

“Fire! Fire! Fire!”

As her life combusts

in the frantic pyre.

 

Blanche slips into delusion,

as Stanley returns

from Stella in the delivery room.

Tearing down the last remains

of the worn down Mardi Gras:

A brief encounter with emotion.

then Stanley consummates the evening

with intense, animal copulation.

Blanche kisses the real world goodbye.

 

Poker night– Stanley apes,

drawing to an inside straight.

Blanche drowns in her confused caricatures:

Della robbia blue.

Blue as the Madonna’s robe.

Blanche dies at sea in her mind

as the doctor and nurse come to lead her away.

“Whoever you are–

I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

And the game is seven card stud.

The curtain descends.

 

 

Winter 1979