Waiting for inspiration

It lingers in the back of my throat like wine waiting to seduce me and on the dunes of my lips it sits like traces of her lip gloss... and it happens so often I have made her my mistress and I hide her away from all the others that linger... all those great first lines... all those amazing titles waiting to be part of some epic novel... or at least some poem that will make her stay.
It comes floating in the air like a magical, whimsical gossamer... a conversation I over heard or a line from an article in a magazine... sometimes it comes from the incoherent mumbling of some beggar... perhaps trying to find the ending to his own rock opera. Those first lines always come so easy... but the rest of the story... the middle and the end... elude me. They haunt me and they taunt me... they crash against the walls in my mind like the waves hitting rocks on the shores of Malta and the spray of the water rises up in hues of gray to paint my evenings in black and white and shades of "what could be"... they haunt me... Like the whispers she left behind... calling to me from a dream... whispering the words she knows will bring me to my knees, the words that will have me crawling on my belling through the fires of my lust, the words I will devour with the hunger of a wolf and drink in like the nectar from Ponce De Leon’s fountain... they haunt me... like the ever present scent of Chanel that I can never wash off my clothing or my fingers... or the sheets on my bed... she’s always there waiting for me to find her... to charm her... to seduce her into my arms once more... but when I reach out to hold her she fades away like the ghosts of so many other lovers that never had the chance to know who I really was and what I was really looking for... and she fades away through the walls and wanders down the hall... taunting me... and I chase after her with promises that I know I will never keep, promises of eternal love and devotion and fidelity... I fall to my knees at the feet of her alter and offer my confession in exchange for communion and the baptism that will cleanse my soul and wash the mortal desires from my body making me worthy of enlightenment... humble and broken and faithfully hers... just give me those words... but she taunts me... like phantom promises from a Lauren Bacall movie... and I... might be Bogart... and I might be insane... but I follow her... from room to room, down hallways and through doors that haven’t been opened since the winter wind blow them shut and I play hide and seek with her... and I bargain with her... I offer what’s left of me to her... I loose my mind for her... but I get nowhere closer to her... and the words that can save me fade away with her - into... the night.