Cushions and Lace

“Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.” - Alfred Hitchcock
 
"Do you like girls?"
The question is common enough
 
that it's become a cliché;
yet, I do like girls,
 
just not in the way the question means,
the fumble in the backseat way,
 
the "I'm watching this terrible movie
because that girl takes her clothes off"
 
way. Trust me, Mein Inquisitor,
I can objectify women
 
as thoroughly as any man,
be he ten times my manliness,
 
or straight as an arrow,
fired by a Levite at a Sodomite.
 
I have my preferences:
crystalline, like icy glass,
 
blown, freckled with frost,
a swirl in each pane,
 
a Christmas window...
Her skin should be like that.
 
Perhaps my Nordic taste
is offensive to you?
 
I understand. But what we're discussing,
I think, are the dark
 
and shallow places of the human persona.
(We talk of souls
 
like rainbows and flowers,
but in the tomb they're just what is,
 
what was, what we consisted of.)
But more than just a Nordic face,
 
a skin like lace
to make an Austen virgin wet,
 
she should have a trickle of blood
somewhere, not necessarily
 
her own. Just a line or two, a splash,
contrasted with a knowing smile.
 
The art, in these things, is complete.
The female world of cushions and grace,
 
whether sexy, or repressed,
is touched by something
 
darkly masculine, enhanced
and complicated by a more complex brutality.
 
Does my artistic taste offend?
I understand.
 
But you have places dark and shallow
too.
 
The picture is a still image from the film Perfect Blue, directed by Satoshi Kon