TO MY BROTHER’S LATE DRAGON LADY

So many sagas     come

And gone     since you and I strode

The ‘70s

Sister–out–law

High boots     high skirts

You with your Nikons

Me with my notebook

Free lancers

To the counter culture

High on sass and chutzpah

We got the low down

On the Cult of ‘Do Jelly’

Me     just free

Of marriage     You

Never believed in it

Did the wild thing

With whomever

Lived with my brother

In perpetual

High drama

Plates flew

Cats cowered

Yours was the tongue of fire

He paid you back     big time

So many sagas come

And gone   That woman

He left you for

Threw a few plates of her own     He left her

For some Delilah     younger

Than my daughters   

She took him on a ride

And my brother?

You escaped his saga

Before you had to see him

Alone and rotting

In a flea bag motel    

In Venice    

Back in the day     he knew everyone

Scored a case of Chateau Neuf de Pape

From the year you were born

Wheeler dealer     glad hand host       

At your thirtieth birthday party

Listen Nikki   you’re what eats him

Who knew     you’d have no life without him

Dragon would devour you    

Forty never find you

In his nursing home

He tells me the same old same old story

I was the one who gave her

Her first Nikon

I was the one who made her

A great photographer

But I’m the one you backlit

In black and white     showing the world

How to wrap a sari

                                               Bare breasted