Poems from The Journey to Kailash V

/ Friday, April 22nd, 2011 / 1 Comment »

Midnight Rendezvous, Boston

 



The satyr lounges on the hotel lobby sofa,
one hoof dangled over the carpet of endless
fleurs-de-lis. Men and women in long black coats
stumble past, in flight from the flash-freeze winds
hidden in Boston’s flurries; they crawl up the stairs,
weighed down by liquor and the doorman’s gaze.

The satyr’s eyes track a waitress’s slit skirt
as she hurries outside for a forbidden smoke.
He smiles, paws the carpet, runs an idle ebony hand
through his curls of beard. No one
meets his gaze or looks his way.

The revolving door squeaks; his horned head turns
to look at the haughty antlers crowning the beast
bearing down on him, with its mantle of leaves
hung on shoulders strong as trees,
its hide of soft fawn down stretched taught
across an iron-muscled chest. The Horned One twirls
his javelin, impatient, stares down his snout
as the satyr reaches out, traces playful fingers
down the groove of the avatar’s hard belly. No one
stops or asks them to stop — in Boston,
your kinks are not our business.

Later, the janitor pauses, appalled
at the animal noises from the restroom stall.
Someday they’ll take out all the doors in here, he thinks,
and goes on about his business.





“Midnight Rendevous, Boston” first appeared in EOTU Ezine, June 2003. Copyright © 2003 by Mike Allen. Reading by the author, © 2008. Art: Detail from “Idyll” by Arnold Böcklin, 1875.

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