her arrogance, like flowers

 
 
‘finding is losing something else.
 I think about, perhaps even mourn,
 what I lost to find this.’ – Richard Brautigan
 
 
I study her in many ways, from many angles.
the floral dress that she clings to tightly, knowing that  
I would rip it away from her flesh. the tease of her leg,
the revelation of her breast, that promises the carnal
temerity that I crave, & quickly breaks that promise.
 
she’s an angel made of insouciance & anomalies. a woman  
like her can kill a man just by the flash of her eyes. in
pursuit of her, I would foolishly walk into a wolf trap, or
a den of vipers.
 
her tousled hair: it was spoiled like that when I shook her,
because she’s gone too much, gone to the rooms of other
men. in my rancid philosophy, she’s that kind of woman.
she plays to an audience of pagan lust, & the timbrel of her
arms makes beautiful music. chanson d’amour is merely
the echo of her shadow.  
 
–  what is a lover but a mondaine wanderer who desires to  
possess the one he loves, to take love & to make love; to  
understand it, as if it could ever be understood.  
what is a poet but the sum of his poetry  –
 
as Brautigan said, finding something is losing something else.
I may have traded away ten other poems to find this one. that’s
how deeply I fell under her spell, how I sanctioned tolerance to  
embrace her, the poetry of her.
 
she is the art under which I continue to suffer,
and I am made of nothing but dreams…
 
 
 
 
(mondaine: as in, disillusioned)