kalypso77

Had the workshop last night.  The poem was well received - the instructor even said I should submit it to a journal :)  
He pointed out that the separation into two poems was confusing and suggested I should just keep it one poem.  Also, he pointed out that the penultimate lines in the last stanza (his eager captive once again, no wounded rage / to recognize the man I wed) were not really that great and the dialogue in the beginning was (as i feared) a little stilted.  So, I revised it again.  Here goes:

The Grill at the Roxy

“Tell me that you’re well -” He was late, and barely dressed

against the chill, handsomely windswept. “I’ll pry-

sweet muse - my conscience hopes you found another guy.”

Arrow-struck, fumbling for a word, I near confessed

how I had spent these ‘trial separation’ years

the oldest flirt on Sunset, draped in lesser men.

Courting their half invited company, I’d then

Make mention of my ring, and leave them to their beers.

“I’m well” I mused. ”The last I heard, you’d shacked up, broke,

 with some calypso singer?” – prelude to his trial -

“Was it much worse than our first place in Venice Beach?

The bedroom had this puckered water stain.  You’d poke

and peel the plaster, “ – he could flatter even drywall

into canvas - “you called it My Unfinished Peace…”

He sighed, “I whispered it our private cherry tree,

and pressed you close beneath the dusty petal rain,

wanting to stay, a husband, nameless, yet remain

content, and let no Siren’s call un-marry me.

It’s true, how I’ve long suffered for this wanderlust,

Misused my friends, played countless longing nights adrift

in booze.  Still dawn arose to this regretful rift -

my life’s lament - that for a song, I squandered us.”

I knew, but as the girls around a smoking stage

forgive unwitting paramours their pure deceit

and each becomes his muse, I willed myself naïve,

hard lost decades cast aside - like passed out pages

advertising some life’s work, glittering the street -

my heart forever young, as long as I believe.