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| Old BHS - (1928-1989) |
Photo by
Kent Durk
Love for Tormented
Juliets
James Hart
Abandoned High
School Building ,
Brookfield , Missouri
Front
Stairway Reflection, BHS-Landscapes by Kent Durk
Here
is where I imagine all the countless couples,
the
hapless high school Romeos and their jilted Juliets,
played
out their little dramas of defiance and desire.
From
the third floor balcony, looking down,
how
many girls must have fantasized dropping
like
broken dolls onto the mid-flight landing below,
a
perfect stage for rendezvous, glass trophy case
panels
on both sides of space superimposing
multiple
reflections of lovers’ whispered tête-à-têtes.
Ghosts
passing in the parade between classes see out
the
big front windows framing the tower
of Capulet
Castle,
a banker’s brick mansion across the street,
all
of it layered in glass reflection like a map to Mantua
trophy
urns worthy of containing the past in its ashes,
athletic
statuettes providing stand-ins for Friar Laurence
and
his urgent warning: wisely and slow; they stumble
that run
fast. Here is where all the tormented Juliets
passed
along their love notes full of passion and poison,
pink
threats and promises written in fractious solitude
stolen
from the study hall teacher’s hawk-like glare.
And
here is also where all the rampant Romeos
waited,
lazily lounging against the broad window sill,
or
standing with one foot resting flat against the wall
in
that mistaken attitude of patience and poise,
hoping
for those fleeting peeks up the girls’ skirts
on
their way down the stairs, reaching for Juliet’s hand,
confusing
their memories of teachers’ clairvoyant words
about
daggers and darkness with their whispered kisses:
if you love me, you’ll show me, you will, or kill me
. . . .
August
29, 2010
Open this portfolio slide show at the link below and look for the
pictures (slides 2, 3, and 5) of the big staircase landing above the
front entrance. Slide No. 5 is the "stage" setting for the poem:
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