Just tell me a lie
The chugging rhythms of your
hands strip me bare,
Tie me up the way
you like me,
Like the first moment when
you approached me as a friend,
As long as I was near
you it was okay.
But off on the dunes we’re
the two dark plastic angels,
“Anything for you,” whispered like
it’s 3rd Avenue and Broadway,
As long as you keep telling
me lies I’ll believe them,
Just keep meeting me in secret
until nobody cares.
Straight spouses after the Christmas party
Light comes cascading
in through the window
from the green hills outside,
I’m taken off guard
by the big white tub
with you sitting so proudly in it,
Your body glistens
like you’ve emerged
out of the water at the beach,
Your skin brown and damp,
your blond hair matted
as it sticks to your shoulders,
You smile a wicked smile
as you stare at me
over by the bathroom doorway?
Two couples with two weeks
vacation in the
Blue Ridge Mountains,
We suddenly hear our husbands
calling for us downstairs;
but you say, “stay!”
You look at me like I’m naked,
twisted up on the bed
with your mouth on me,
“Even Hitler liked Paris,”
you whisper, and I close the door
and leave trembling.
The book of Mary
I can't remember waking up in love with you,
because I don’t remember falling asleep in love with you.
You and I are a million words that don’t exist yet,
startled one hour, starving for each other the next,
both of us underdeveloped in our togetherness,
cutting each other’s wrists in the kitchen sink,
blood the color Henry Miller would write it,
in a moment when we both realize there is no use lingering,
pain like God’s pain, his eyes bulging from the wars,
through the blue room you can feel it in your throat,
you tear your clothes off, hang yourself by your hands with rope,
you are the most secret thing in the world, rain on a dark child’s
face,
you break me because you want all of me,
you love me because the pain is that enormous,
this is right now, tonight, yesterday, a million years in the
future,
I drive in a yellow cab looking for you everywhere,
“Come,” I hear you saying; “Come,” I hear in
darkness,
“People are just things,” you keep signing to me in my hand,
as though we can both just edit a lifetime full of mistakes.
[END]
© 2005 Jéanpaul Ferro - Contributor's
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