The night you seeped beneath my skin
I could feel your calloused hands scratching to dig inside.
Strangely showing careful and deliberate tenderness
Restraining the aggressive necessity that throbbed through your veins.
Your calculations were key
Yet you second guessed every move
Like a well studied schoolboy
Fumbling the oral presentation
So your tongue danced a distraction
As the muscles at the base of your spine froze to stone.
Apparently, I’m your medusa, your kryptonite, your luscious poison apple.
I don’t mean to frighten you so
But please let go of your unrelenting judgment
And experience joy with ease for once.
Just this once.
With a stroke of your ink-stained fingertips
Down my arched back I understand your intention is to record
All of me for your next writing session
You’re reveling in the poetic contradictions of this restraint.
I am fuel for your next monologue.
A scenario for a love scene
That will romantically play out better than this.
You’re the Playman, trying to be the Birdman
Memorizing every noise I make to compile
Your opus.
I shouldn’t complain because you’re soft and attentive
But not all for my pleasure, because behind your cavernous eyes
Lies perfection and pain you try to maintain for The Art.
Even at this beginning you’re lying to me and you deceive yourself.
But one part of you knows the truth
And calls you on your shit
As hardened muscles release, refusing to submit.
So I take the blame and ask to stop
To save you the confession of the disappointment you’ve caused.
I roll to my side
And the nausea sets in.
Not guilty for sins before God, or mom or anyone but myself.
Just aware that my Orpheus has looked back too many times,
Leaving me vanished as dust in his arms
To exist only in the grainy, black ink
That stains the pages of your notebook.
