violin road harlot

 
she doesn’t know the sex crimes of an older man.
too old for her, but it’s what she wants.

her face is on my pillow
her voice is in the old love songs
should have kept my heart incarcerated
in its oubliette, where it belongs.

I was at war before she was born, stealing an hour from the scourged
field to spend it with a whore. I’d get drunk on the oleander in her hair,
nerium whiskey, as she carried me between her long, industrious legs
to a garden of nefarious perversion. gladly beyond: because I don’t
know where I am when I’m inside my head.

our clandestine affair is strictly noir. a wayward expatriate carries his
secrets in his shoulder-holster. my bitterroot eyes are concealed by the
roguish tilt of my fedora, not to be covertly dramatic, but to hide as
much of me as I can.  from myself.  from her.

maybe I was never Bogart, but a more brooding version of John Garfield,
playing his amorous violin in ‘Humoresque.’ she was a woman, that violin,
euphoric & misty-eyed on his shoulder.

I should abandon her, tearful, on her balcony, where the train & the wind
blow past. she can be rapt in her sinful maneuvers, exonerating the
vibrational rivers of her notorious passion. she can be wet without me.

if I painted her a picture of the real me  
–  fallen soldier’s shadow. half of sadist. half of sorrow  –
she would know the absolute agony of romance.
there is no art or music to subvert it;

there is no poetry for it…


(Artist unknown)