Red Light Sequence

I.

Extended like a ludicrous plant, the venous
trunk and cobra-crown. The tongue teases,
dancing over the split tip, appeasing
the basest of the longings of man's blood.
Docile, sunk in ornate bedding, the beast
reclines, languid with nervous exhilaration,
legs and indolent rump passive and inert.
Loveless, he observes the passionless motion,
bleach-blonde curls swept over tanned shoulders,
mouth engaged in soft strangulation:
constricted lips of manufactured red
attend the beast, sublimely comforted.


II.

Ascension and descent, intrusion and retraction
to seemingly endless repetition, motion
that acts upon the cusp of tiresomeness
and yet retains its urgent energy.
The beast with two backs; the time honored dance;
the joining at the edge of violence;
the ritual coupling: mixture of two flames
whose temporal conjunction burns nothing. O
fledglings mated by the prying light,
the leering invasion of the spying lens,
who casually unfurl your slender limbs
to be the plunder of insatiable eyes
that stare like dead lights in infected rooms,
be curled again, in childhood's chrysalis
redressed. Be dressed again in innocence.


III.

Not Helen, nor the Nile queen were so borne,
upon such luxury of silk and satin, not
the well-fed olive flanks of Cleopatra
nor the white thighs of Queen Elizabeth.
Such sweet superfluous pillows buoyed no heads
which by day's light supported diadems.
No royal arm lay regally at rest
in such an amplitude of opulence.
O city of angels, few walk haloed here.
Where are the streets that run with milk and honey?
And yet the streets are filled with fallen angels
who stare with bright eyed sorrow at the stars.


IV.

On shins and forearms, she patiently leans
and shows off everything. Bathed in vivid light,
the fair fruit hangs between the parted flanks
that fill our field of vision and blot all else.
But we sit in solitude, perpetual bachelors
with smoky fingers, in alcoholic stupor,
petulant bellies distended, rife with desire
that turns from yearning to a sickening pain.
Lithe shapes of girls, shadows and lantern slides,
intangible reproductions of real flesh,
dangle beyond our reach: our barren hands
reach in disgust to purge a burning seed.


V.

Now she reclines, her backside lushly pillowed,
muscles relaxed, legs indolently wide;
her eyes are heavy-lidded, drowsily gazing
at us that leer wild eyed.

Our numb and glossy paper loves requite us
stare for stare, and feed the maw of hunger;
and while we stay unsated, we grow older
and they younger.

Intangibly transfixed for us in time,
forever fair and fabulous, but cold—
Thou sweet unravished brides our crippled fingers
cannot hold.


1997