the golden age.

And as we sat exchanging anecdotes and theories,
I couldn’t help but feel particularly Roman:
draped in silken sheets and woven pashmina shawls—
hand-spun from the finest wool and stitched with hundreds of colors of thread—
sipping sweet red wine, bottled almost two decades ago,
lounging on cushioned fainting couches
arranged around a beautiful coffee table,
feasting on bars of bitter dark chocolate
and smoking rolled tobacco of the most delectable Turkish blend—
the living room was our colosseum
and that night, we were royalty.
We discussed poetry and politics,
art and the apocalypse,
love and life.
We fantasized about being famous
and how one day our great works of art and fiction
would be published and analyzed in the universities.
Like Hemmingway and Gertrude Stein
in their parlors, everyone would talk about
how we too collected in the same social circle,
and sat around inspiring each other.