Beveled Glass and Annas

Oh beveled glass and the five minutes!
But Mike we haven't met! Oh the beveled glass!
The tarnished view is taken.

Enter thus with tendrils floating
perilously close to cigar smoking,
cigars cigars cigars and
tendrils, the gender gap,
we walk on stilts and preen
for what? A wedding, perilously
close to a Photo Op?
Just another one, just another one
fireworks behind a ten-tier plastic
prop, cut with a saber.
The witch-like bride makes peace
with her prop and her background
two villages, two people united
and the ten tier'd prop weakens
before the chaotic drumming
the hired dancers, (all bedouin of course),
we are duplicating a culture here Mike
but we haven't met...
how could we in five minutes?
Our table is occupied by a rondolet
girl, rondolet
but bitter, replacing his ex
Ukrainian who hopped back
into the Ukraine with two tots -
another prop I suppose,
but the two of them
rise automatically to the Debka,
rise like a storm in response to the barometer
of a lackluster union, no smiles or thank yous
just a Ukrainian wife gone missing and a rondolet
Arab girl replaces her now.

Mike,

we aren't Vronsky and we aren't Anna
but we've come in tendrils
to speak of beveled glass!

The father of the bride smiles
at all his props and this must
be costing him a half million
but no mind Mike, there's more where that came from!
Five minutes are a lazy eight infinity you know...
a half million let's say:
fifty tables on this side,
fifty on that, sixty percent businessmen friends,
more than two thousand dead shrimp easy,
a ten tier'd prop and fat slices at every table:

MARZIPAN

and cake studded with a grainy hazelnut,
let's say he's smiling at his props eh?
Let's say he could be a Vronsky
when I dance more than anyone could have guessed
when I do a belly dance from hell,
all red hair tendrils and the thumbs up
from a guy we knew (not you Mike)
in Riyadh who sold nuts, he's looking satanic
when I shake my bangled wrists, fooling them all,
I've got him chained but you know what Mike?
I've not met you and won't divest you of the hope
that Anna did choose more than just the props
when she arched inside the bosom
of the Monot scene after a Sunni Wedding..
after achieving another Pontius thumbs up
after surviving all that! Becomes one of them
and arches inside the belly of a whale
down on Monot near Martyr's square,
the kind of place where people burn up
because they can't get out of the flames,
it's just so small compared
to the Grand Ballroom at the Phoenicia
where across the street in a year
a car will explode into all eternity for us,
so small in the belly of that whale with manifestoes,
and so many Annas.
In Monot, the underground bars sound happy from the street,
no one bothers to remember where all the glass came from.
No one wants to see the melted Russians in the auditorium.