chelsea cantare'

 
she wore the shadows.
she wore the peculiar shade of ransomed loneliness, given in
a pumpkin carriage sedan, to a cadre of come-&-go consorts
as they moaned the primal moans of doomcore sex. the
back alley ballade that was not written in the stars, but to her
it was poetry.

she wore her solitude like a hooded cloak. it made her adorably
unattractive.

at a table in a small café, she fingers the keys of her laptop, waiting
for a stranger with a good pickup line, something she might have
read in a novel, & glances furtively at every man that enters. of course,
it’s never him.  (if she could transport herself to Paris; she knows
love is better in French.)

me, I drift in & out of loneliness, the loneliness that belongs to women.
we walk a perverse trail that could lead to spoken sonnets in a
backseat or a cut-rate motel room. but mostly, it’s just slow dancing to
broken hearts. some dames are flushed with anger, & others, so
remarkable of sorrow, I can’t hang around to watch them cry.

I don’t run much to cafés, being a purveyor of seedy divebars, but for
a girl like her, I’d void a contract. maybe I’m the stranger lurking in her
darkest desire. she could be the lover I’d do time with, on an island
at the beginning of time, when clothes were not even an afterthought.

I figure she’s hidden in a valley of harps & violins, between iron
mountains, & it’s a long long way from here to there. I’d hitch a ride
on a marauding tailwind, & take her with me, if it would carry us to a
city of harlots & desperadoes,

and romance made for those who have no other beauty…


(Art: Emmanuel Saugez)