CONNECTION :MARLOWE-BASSANO

While reading Ovid's
love elegies
Christopher Marlowe
hid his manuscripts
above his alcove drawers
with his kept secrets
and friendship letters
poems and plays
to share his better days
with the beautifully black haired
Sephardic Amelia Bassano
the "The Dark Lady"
in the worshipful sonnets
attributed to Shakespeare
yet we did not know who read
their secret texts
some of which refer
to a forbidden sexuality,
as Chris was threatened
by the royal court
for being an enemy
and not loyal to the Queen
as an atheist of sorts
and urged not to consort
with this wonderful jewel
as he kissed Amelia Bassano
a thespian clever Marrano
yet brought up by conversos
and four lesbian moms
she who came hidden at his door
originally from Morocco,
behind her doubled masks,
yet you ask me for the secret
that she kept in her religious
sect forever
we ask if she was a Jewess,
Christian or a Moor
behind her mask
that history cannot
any longer ignore
yet she was an emerging
and wise poetess for sure,
for Christopher Marlowe
had so many troubles
like Amelia Bessano
being lured in and baited
by an evil nation- state
yet he waited at his age
to make a living
upon the Elizabethan stage
from his poet lore
hoping the London stage
would a least have an offering
for him him
or a yearly position
that he could deposit
his mind's dramatic greatness
upon the theater would fall
from his traumatic soul
worried that an inquisition
or investigation would ensue,
that his whole genius identity
would be lost or discovered
in the tempest tossed
medieval age
from his hours of procrastination
over the stage
at his fulfilled state of mind
which insured him a double life
yet he preferred
to have a kind benefactor
and to write plays and poetry
as a dramatic actor
to give out the wonderful lines
which will rhyme and reason
as a charismatic performer
in the theatrical season
yet others thought of him
only in connection with sin
in the dark visage of crime
from history's time bombs
yet it was he who reasoned
that he was in always danger
to be critically double -crossed
by his stranger assassin
at this  metamorphosis of time
Chris hiding in his hallways
to take away his life and liberty
by the powers that be.