Poem for Thursday and Local Bunnies

Halston
By Randall Mann

Roy Halston Frowick, 1932–1990

He kept his middle name, the pick of   the lot,
he thought, and mispronounced himself: Hall-stun.

At Bergdorf’s he acquired an accent and referred
to himself   in the third person, every bird he flayed

wrapped in Ultrasuede. He lit a True with a True,
smeared his hirsute muse with sequins. There were air-

kisses, Capote’s new-cut face at Studio 54, that Baccarat
flute of ejaculate. Never too late, he ordered in

meat and potatoes, and a trick.
He called it “dial-a-steak, dial-a-dick.” He appeared

on The Love Boat, Halstonettes in tow,
maybe the high, maybe the low, watermark.

When his pupils betrayed him at work, on came the shades.
And a well-cut blazer, paranoia. He had signed away

the rights to his name, for options. When he tried
to reclaim them from the conglomerate,

he excused himself to the toilet, just a sec —
white dust on a black turtleneck.

His block started to look a lot like sickness.
Even his beloved orchids, the sickness.

Just like that, the eighties were gone.
New York, New York, the eighties were no one.

-------- 

This spring seems to consist of rainy weekends and perfect weekdays. Today was no exception. I did some cleanup, I hung up some wind chimes, I took two walks and rescued several cicadas that had flopped on their backs and needed to be put in trees. Keeping files organized has become a computer war since Google Drive/Google Photos changed from Backup and Sync (and it won't back up my photos no matter what settings I use) so that has been taking up too much time. 

After this week's The Masked Singer (I figured it would be who it was), we watched the rest of the Halston miniseries. It felt weirdly retro -- not the era in which it was set, but the superficiality of his personal details and the judgment of his excesses felt like a bunch of older biopics of men who died of AIDS in the same era. Ewan McGregor was enjoyable to watch and moving during the emotional scenes, but those were too few. I haven't posted neighborhood bunnies in a while: