[RCL]

On Last Looking into Hefner’s Playboy

Much have I traveled where no man grows old,
where surgically shaped women lie and preen
round sunny L. A. poolsides. As a teen,
I knew the narcissistic playbook cold,
and through my youth and midlife blithely trolled,
heedless of the geriatric scene.
Never thinking years would dull the sheen
of buxom Barbies in the center-fold,
I now feel like a scanner of dark skies
who looks for newborn starlets but finds porn;
or shriveled Hef himself, whose bloodshot eyes
see sirens in retreat—and charm outworn,
all lust a bust, hangs limp in his demise,
breathless, upon the Disney Matterhorn.