Solitary-Poet

Dancers in old dance halls,

Looking from small window slits,

Cages built for burning youth,

Light only grazing the edges,

Releasing slowly into darkness.

Eyes, clotted at edges,

Once pure silver sensual indexes,

Search empty streets for lovers,

Where old ‘Johns’ roamed,

Smoked cigarettes, spit weed, tobacco,

Planned night’s pleasures.

Greyed mottled skin,

Veins purpled, years of pain,

Reach out and fray at ends,

Peter out with nothing left,

Of old lustful nights.

Memories of pleasures given,

Exchanged with silver and coin,

Held tightly to a sweating chest,

History written in nights,

Of years gone by.

Hands curved inside chipped nails,

Nailed edges scraping sandpaper,

Tracing lines, Forming mindless circles,

Re-creating old stories, old pleasures.

Fingers search sleepers’ arched back,

Silk sheets rancid with sweat,

Multiple bodies mixed together,

Sequenced carnal pleasure,

Remembrances captured fleetingly.

Single sweat bead rolls down,

The spine as memory catcher,

Where each carnal hand touched,

Experienced momentary pleasures,

Ended slowly in the abyss at end.

Silk woven draped steel cages,

Trapping, stripping young flesh,

Creating web weavers who knot,

Light silken threads of lost dignity.

Turning threads into twisted ladders,

Peering through small window slits,

Where light only grazes edges,

Then loses itself to darkness.

Living in silk draped steel cages,

Web weavers await and search,

Emptiness and release,

From streets of singular pleasures,

Another nights encounter with,

Self-fashioned lovers and twisted ‘Johns’.