Dolly Madison kisses me back sweet-like
outside of Ruby’s
where we sip elixirs and giggle
at the sidewalk staggers
of late night downtown.

“I don’t want someone directing me,”
She says, unexpectedly
(and it comes out like a question),
“but I don’t want to tell someone else
what to do, either.”

“Oh oh,” I say
“Like two mustangs.”

And she says, “what?”

“Two mustangs,” I reiterate.
Not a rider and a horse
or a horse and a rider,
with the digging of spurs and
the crack of crops,
but two steeds, side by side,
running for all they’re worth.

Dolly’s eyes stare
before they
roll up and to her left.
I make my hands move forward
up and down and
side to side,
together.

She lights with a slow smile and says, “yeah”
and kisses me harder.

In my mind the mustangs
sweat.

Karma was a dancer
at the Déjà Vu,
trading fantasies a few days a week
for *****, crumpled bills and
then living the dream on her days off.
That was before I knew her.
Before she faded just a little.

Which is not to say
that she was no longer beautiful
with her mermaid hair,
the color somewhere between
phosphorescent amber and
burning chestnut brown,
down to her *** and falling all around
her painfully sensuous curves.

The faint pucker lines 'round her mouth,
that liver spot,
a slight, barely discernable paunch,
I could see such things, too but
they only endeared me to
the façade of some silly notion
a kin to forever.

We would stay up late,
even on the weeknights,  
wine silly and
**** chatty.
She would dance
and I would tell her
****** poems in exchange.
It seemed like a good trade
to me but the truth is,
she was being shorted in the deal.

We said,
I love you
but I’m not sure we knew
that we didn’t really have that
to offer one another.
Both of us had sold more
than we had ever bargained for
long before we met.

When money ran thin and
times grew hard
she split.

Hope still stops by on occasion.
(She was a dancer, too).
But it seems a bit easier to distinguish
differences between the faux
and the genuine these days.
She doesn’t stay long.

I like to blame it all on Karma
despite knowing that I was just never
quite frugal or savvy enough to afford more than a few perfume-drenched moments at the foot of the stage.

There is this girl
cat lanky long
hair geometric and black
love right angular

There is this girl
moonlight faint
baby talking the plants
and they die

There is this girl
a burning in the throat
the sensation of something coming up
Acid reflux

There is this girl
who came back
and then left

There is this girl
twitching wet and frayed on the sheets
smoldering electric breaker trip
Coughing

There is this girl
licentiously staring at me
over the steering wheel
through the windshield
across the hood
racing the engine
black, black tire smoke
smiling

There is this girl
here on a holliday
a week long, all inclusive
get away

There is this ******* girl
wavy and swirling through the tears, still

There is this dog
two cats
no three
a lot of **** cats
there are these other dogs

There is this house
that felt like home
just once

There was this lady
who forgot her name
and got lost in the bathroom

I’m the man
not enough

You watch a ****** movie
and it rates 1.3 stars higher
because you watched it with her.

She carried them about,
stones in her pockets.
Each one a little secret.

The weight of them
distracting her in conversations.
The bulk of them
effecting her posture.
They would knock
when she would walk.

While she could manage
the slight though ever present
force they exerted
she was perpetually terrified
that one day,
in the midst of some random encounter,
a small hole would
open up
allowing them to tumble out.

They did eventually become too heavy
and the pressure of them
made a space
where
sickness poured in
taking their place.

Stones in the pockets
was not the official diagnosis.
But that's what killed her.
I know
because I watched it.

And I miss her.  
That one woman who loved me
unconditionally.
I need her at times
like now.

I carry no stones of my own
and I am not afraid of holes
but
sometimes
we need the kind of love
that has no strings
like when the other kinds
wish to bury us.

I could see it on her face
Religion carved into the half moon
of her profile
All of gods
judgment  
in the hollows of her eyes
Cruel sadomasochistic saints
painted on her pursed lips

Neither her graceful ***
nor those unearthly ****
could ever persuade me to
relinquish my oh so mortal self
again

So I ran away
really ******* fast

The rope,
it might be pulling a bit too tight,
red braided and cutting
into the white.
She is squirming and writhing
as I wish her to.
Want and scared are
deliciously dancing
in her eyes.

It's misleading.
Very!

I am the one bound and tied,
I am the one held captive.
It's her flesh welted and swollen but
the beating is mine.

I am the prisoner.

How ever convincing
that whimper may sound,
I am the ******* victim, here.