Madame Sosostris

MADAME SOSOSTRIS

MADAME SOSOSTRIS

Madame Sosostris—

Famous Dixie clairvoyante

Grew tired of Kansas

Texas was so crude—

Colorado even worse

But Kansas the Pits

She had a bad cold—

The freezing prairie winters

Simply did her in

She used to be known—

As the most beautiful girl

In Alabama

READING THE CARDS

She’d married rich but—

Ended up the lonely wife

Of a Cattleman

She couldn’t speak now—

Her eyes failing and she was

Somnambulistic  

But she could still read—

Your fortune with her Tarot

As well as your beads

Wicked pack of cards—

The Drowned Phoenician Sailor

"That is you," she said

DROWNED PHOENICIAN SAILOR

I climbed the Staircase—

She was there waiting for me

“I’ve expected you”

“Your eyes are dead pearls—

Look, here is Belladonna

You’re beneath the Sea”

“A vast Prairie Sea—

Our Lady of the Prairie

You’re the Drowned Sailor”

“Your horoscope bleak—

Spectral as the old Flint Hills

You’re like the Hanged Man”

COTTONWOOD FALLS

Bleak like Strong City—

But Cottonwood Falls is worse

Its Gothic Courthouse

Tall, gaunt and ghostly—

Spectral Victorian-esque

Looming over town

But even worse though—

The Stephen Jones Spring Hill Ranch 

Old Haunted Mansion 

House on Haunted Hill—

Like the Bates Motel Mansion

Right out of “Psycho”

THE MIRROR

Above the antique—

Mantel there used to be a

A fireplace Mirror

Jones would contemplate—

The stranger gazing at him

There in the firelight

He’d hear Louisa’s—

Footsteps shuffling slowly down

The staircase at night

She was sleepwalking—

Again her bad nerves acting

Up as usual

KANSAS CITY

So he sold his ranch—

And moved to Kansas City

For Louisa’s sake

“What shall I do now?”—

Stephen Jones asked himself then

The Ex-Cattleman

But the Cottonwood—

Was his Thames & now he was

Tiresias 

Sitting on wall—

Watching all the cars go by

There in the Wasteland