Saturday, December 2, 2023

Artists

 

Their bodies are

    spindly

their faces earnest and wry

their hands nimble and strong

their walks handsome and calm

They are beautiful,

but I cannot help think of

     their yellowed balls.


I don't believe they wash

     their slim depressed bodies.

I don't believe they believe in

     continued charms

     and beauty

they are like little boys

who know

   that if they wait around long

      enough, their desired woman

      will eventually throw up

      her lonely hands

      and sigh

      and be grateful

      to have a cock to wrap

            herself around.


These artist mouths

    are sour to me now

    sweat and cigarette-stained

                  fingertips

they think

    they look good in hats

because it is too exhausting

      to tell them the truth.

they are the clowns

    of a glamorized

        sepia masculinity.

they are products of their many

    drunken audiences

    dull mirroring a nightly

           cinematic delusion

they don't know

-- how don't they know?! --

    they are the cardboard cutouts

   of a longlost cultural epiphany

they are a disney themeride script

      a ridiculous appendage


But they are studied

       and disciplined

       and care for tradition

       and use an easy mischief

   they are comfortable to be around

   and dream after you with lusty eyes

   and remind you

     of the indie boy love interests

     in the movies you dreamed your life

       up by before you had ever known

        a man, his fickle temper

        his boyish body, his sharp pelvis

        shoving its way into your soft

        wide hips. his tiny shoulders

        ragged against your breasts

        as you coax him into his

           wildest dreams and feel empty.


Your desire contorts

       into a sense that you

       should feel grateful

         to be so sullied

  that love

   is a fragile object

   a trick of the light

          that if you lose your hard focus

          it will shatter

              or float away.

  you develop a smoking habit

  to cover the ick of his body on yours

  you pretend to cum,

          and then smoke away your

           appetite, satisfy

          that hollow annoyance

          the irritation of his

                    wormness, with

          the assurance that you

          look the part. you assume the role

             of the skinny poet's muse

             the counterpart

               to his audience's daydream.

             you moodily elongate your nakedness 

                       in the slanted light

             proudly arch through pools of 

                       shadow and smoke above him, 

            drag a hand up the swerve of your body,

            and bury it in your hair. 

            you are sexy. you smoke. you make it burn.

      you harvest more false

        desire by watching other

        women watch him.

      they say you are lucky,

           and you use that like porn

             when he reaches for you

             hungrily in his sleep.


Your life becomes obsessed 

       with how you are supposed to feel

and you are confused

      when that resentment boils

          up in you like vomit

and rather than let him sink his

   rancid body into you for warmth again,

   you tell yourselves you are broken.

too clouded

     by this elaborate argument

      to remember

     the most explicit evidence

       that something is wrong is

                      you allowed 

           such a creature access 

               in the first place


too clouded

   to remember the way out

   of the trap, lost for years here

      in the self-imposed tangle of mismatched

      half-truths, 

   its fraudulent wisdom an

      endless icey claim on the heart.

      


So I remember their bodies.

I remember their need for constant

      mothering

I remember how their humor and charm

      evaporate behind closed doors

and how even the sight 

                of their satisfaction 

slows my blood to a venomous crawl,

and scourges my heart with malice.

      A hateful disease

      that rakes through my livid body,

      and so wastes the life that is meant

      to be cherished, 

 

              and love freely given.