I’m here..!

Looser than whiskey nights, you were slinging sheaths
of sin casually over your shoulder, draping them across your
form like haughty silk rather than the unsightly terror
of demons grinning from the embroidery of the fabric.
You swayed your hips in rhythmic movement as though
you could hear the beat of my heart furiously thundering
in violent protest as it yearned for you, lusting for you,
hoping your sultry smudged obsidian eyes would seek out mine, too.
You held yourself with grace and seduction: spine straight,
head tilted up, shoulders back, your breasts greeting the air
just a hair’s breadth before your every bold footfall.

Click,

Sharp steps announcing your presence as if no one noticed you,
as if people weren’t drawn to your predator strut,
slinking so sensually, your shadow teasing lustful strangers
as the exaggerated shape briefly shrouds them in sweet,
enticing darkness.
Your extended leg makes wetness pool inside my mouth,
flooding my velvet heat with a gush I only want you to taste.
But I want to experience you, too: one lick, two licks, three,
and then four — how many more until your resolve cleanly breaks?
You looked so deliciously fragile, like I could tear you apart
with a single swipe of my nails severing limbs into ribbons
of your pretty pink flesh. Except darkness always seeks out darkness,
wanting to latch onto something familiar to its wretched shades,
the inflamed madness, and through a glass darkly,
I discovered a tormented soul devastated by heartache;
I found myself entranced by the beauty I witnessed there,
laying supine staring up from the deepest trench of the abyss
hoping anyone could save you.

You are a delicate flower — an Angel’s Trumpet —
lovelier as you unfurl, I long to see you blossom before me.
I want to pick and press you into the anguished pages
of Neruda’s Residence on Earth, your fragrant poison
fittingly immortalized on work penned in stricken grief.
I could drink your nectar, uncaring that your toxins could
drive me insane because I’d be insane not to have you, feel you,
taste you — I’ve seen you in dreams and exchanged pieces
of my soul to the seductress of sleep to memorize the inflection
of your tone, your confident stride, the coy smile promising
later yet never soon enough, but you are perfection my mind
could never conceive were it not for your presence in this very room.
You’re the enigma not so confounding, yet the puzzle every man
burns to solve.
It doesn’t escape your notice how men shift the fabric
of their pants as vulture eyes trace your hourglass figure;
they don’t want your tortured mind, they want your mouth,
your hands, your willing sex, because to their liquor-induced haze,
your aesthetic is the broken sum of parts.
Wit becomes atrophied muscle dwindling in disuse,
you become a commodity, something for the taking
but never for slow exploration.

It’s all smoke and mirrors, you think as you consider
your reflection staring back at you from the cocktail glass clenched
in your hand, a frantic expression overcoming
that stranger’s panicked face, clouded over from the erotic dance
of those rising soft plumes licking edges, as she curls
into herself before the thick tendrils of suffocating heat consume her.
You are more than skin. Skin is more than you.
You want to be in power. The power in you wants to be empowered.
You are just another pretty painting in heels with swaying hips
and naturally swollen lips always pondering, always dreading the moment
when time inevitably alters you and the veneer finally chips —
can someone still find beauty in the exoskeleton remains
of mere words and dreams? You’re living life as a somnambulist,
movements heavy and leaden, but in dreams you are soaring, seeing
and feeling beyond the wingspan of your immediate existence.

I’m here — a person just like you — standing on a dimly lit stage
as I recite the words I siphoned off from a swelling well of ectoplasm
in a soul not unlike yours. I’m clutching the mic as my amplified voice
is carried by sound waves tinged gray in the flat absence
of all the wonder that would be at long last whisked away.
Time flees, her skirts billowing with gusts heaved
from your every sigh when memories fade
and all the ones you loved best quietly turn to debris.
There’s a power in your gaze I would gladly become beholden to,
surrendering my everything just so I could know you.
Instead, I swirl my merlot, tip my glass back in one swift swig
and swallow, a hand already beckoning the bartender
as my mind determinedly seeks a lonely sojourn into a liquid
mahogany dreamscape.