rivers deep & lonely

 
sixty dollars. it didn’t take long for her to earn it.
for a man to give it up, as she exonerated the droplets of desire
from his warranted heart.

she’d drag him from the rivers of his desolation, for the brief
travesty of professional love. she’d take a rag & wipe the dust.
if it was there.

so many times I was caught in the vertigo of indiscretion  –  
who gets the money, the whiskey or the whore…

reflections of my eyes dancing like flames in the shadows on the
wall. stain of her red lips on my mouth, just another notorious
encounter. but I let the infamy fade: it doesn’t make good poetry.

I’d lay there amid the spirit sounds. traffic in the street. sins of the
night as the rain tried to obliterate them. I watched her as she
reapplied her make-up, even as she didn’t want me to. I wondered
if she ever loved someone.  ever.

how deep were her rivers…  how lonely.

‘gently and slowly, sir,’ she says,
as she wears the evening by the hour…


(Art: Ellen Rogers)