IT'S JUST MY LUCK

It's just my luck
To move into a dark, romantic mansion,
A labyrinth of morbid, decadent Victorian pleasures,
And find I've got Fidel Castro
Hiding out in my attic.
I wake before dawn
After a sleep that seems like decades,
And smell his pungent cigar smoke
Wafting down in musty ribbons.
I look out on the porch, and by the front door.
Khrushchev has left the plans
For the short-range missiles
Neatly rolled and secured with a rubber band.
I decide to carry them up to the attic
And introduce myself.
But I flip the switch by the attic stairs,
And the hall and stairs remain dark.
He's taken all the bulbs while I've been sleeping.
It must be fate for me to walk these darkened rooms
Like a long-dead, bourgeois, gringo Che Guevara,
And smell that pungent cigar smoke
For all eternity.
It's just my luck.

Copyright 2007 by Jon Gregory. Written in 2003.