I lay in bed imagining how I will whisper to the memory of all the young girls I seduced when I was 26... young creamy thighs I stroked gently with my fingertips that I will remember more distinctly than the conversation that lead me to their beds... the back of freckled shoulders with subtle traces of the sun I tattooed with my lips... and my teeth... I will burn into my memory now those buttocks I can remember pressed against me in the calming of the night just before the summer sun rises to chase the remnants of passion away... and all the breasts I conquered on cab rides home that I would ravish in the lions den... I can remember the delicate lines of certain necks that glistened by the light of a flickering candle or the hypnotic glow of a broken television set... I can taste the sweat I licked off the backs of dark skinned girls in cheap hotel rooms in the days before Juarez became a war-zone... that tasted of lime and talcum powder...
I imagine... when I am an old man... and the meaning of my life has abandoned me for a younger and much more committed warrior poet... that perhaps one... or two of these young girls might find their way back to me and with the hands of an aging house keeper they might sooth my rusty heart... ticking away, out of rhythm like an old wind up pocket watch handed down from fathers to sons since the first world war... and with the lips that once charmed me into staying in bed much longer than I should have, to deposit the last of the love I could afford to give for the evening... they might whisper their tale of misguided youth and dreams that did not quite come true... so that I may conjure up that tender delicate creature whose name I can only release in sighs between bottles of wine... and bring to me the words to write a song so sad and true that legions of angels would knife their way out of the earth to stab at my soul to silence it’s moans of desire and lust... words to fall on me with rain drops that burn this wasted dessert as the fires of hell will burn the flesh of carnival preachers that charmed foolish young girls into dancing with the devil ‘round a midnight bonfire... words that blow in with the southern winds from a far away shore carrying the drunken tale of Portuguese sailors who linger at the bottom of the sea, scraping the ocean floor for sunken treasure and love letters that never reached the hearts of teenage mistresses that still wander the beaches of Fortaleza waiting for the ghost of their lovers to return with gifts from Istanbul and Capri...
I stumble out of bed and make my way in the dark to a makeshift alter at the end of the hall and light a candle to Saints Kerouak and Cummings... I light incense for Hemingway and Steinbeck... I pour shots of tequila for Versace and Dior and Halston too... I light a Cuban cigar and inhale it’s desperate Carribean brew... and blow it out with a prayer to a framed picture of Raquel Welch... who hangs over trinkets left behind by the victims of my desires... ear-rings and bracelets... lipstick and eyeliners... hair clips and hand mirrors... things I could not throw out for moments like this... I take a pair of panties left behind from the last one and offer them up in fire to my mistress Raquel... that she may call up the waters from the deep to pour down on my miserable soul... for a poem... just four pathetic little melancholy lines that will help put my soul at ease... I dance naked around a pile of orchids and lavender and assorted flowers from my mothers garden, placed above kameas and sigils drawn on the floor in a frantic trance designed to raise the spirits of forgotten burlesque girls... I slice open the palm of my hand with a kitchen knife and let the blood fall on my delicate array of colors before I spill the rest of the tequila on it to light the pyre of my sacrifice... and with a final howl up at Heaven I collapse to the cold tile floor in a mud of my own blood and sweat... and paint my face with the ashes of my unrequited prayers... empty and spent with nothing left to give the world I whisper a name I haven’t spoken in fifteen years... and think of smooth creamy thighs... and the smell of her hair... I feel her nipples graze my lips and she sighs into my ear... "forever".... I want to cry... but I have nothing left to give... before I fall unconscious... I hear her footsteps coming down the hall... I turn to her... she smells like the rain... dressed in a long, red, backless Halston made sheer by the waters of my lust she smiles approvingly... but shakes her head the way she does when she finds me in this state... I smile and offer my bloody hand to her as she walks to the fire... perhaps new desires... if not inspiration, might be on the rise... tonight...
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