Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Room service, please


The Butler Model of Tourism


I keep coming back here year after year,
black valise with a busted zipper,
spring-shot lobby divans drained of color,

to press crisp bills into Monte’s
trembling hand, rattling around in his
thread bare uniform with the rest of his

clattering bones and ease myself onto
this sagging bed to listen to the sound
of his creaking cart and scuffling feet

recede into absolute silence down
the dimly lit hall broken only by
the lively conversation between the

man and the woman I can just make out
in the water stained fresco above my head
the two of them lost in a light-hearted

row as if I can’t hear their bald appraisals,
shockingly frank in this wall papered room
with its musty corners and milky windows,

disagreeing only on the degree
of my incremental progression through
The Butler Model of Tourism;

the man making a half-hearted case for
Rejuvenation, the woman straddling the  
thin line between Stagnation and Decline.



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