poem 33 of a poem a day for 2012

   red light district


it's August
here
hazy and late
the smell of the sea
is canal spread
throughout this old city
each ornate squeezed
building is eased
into each other
is jigsaw fit into
a narrowed mouthing of
what taxes property here

it's not
the buildings here
that swing near
the orbital wombs
it's the water
the pulsed breaths
the lapped life
with death
each cycle
as night does
with day
begins to sing
what the ends
have to say

old round
songs snake
like the exhale
symphonies of
blood crawling
onto tingled skin
from within
she looked nineteen
maybe twenty
coiled in curled sin
her red light on
and window dressed
reading Edgar Allen Poe
in hardcover no less

I ambled and belled
hushed a door
opened to closed
there a menu was tabled
I smiled my edges open for a drink
and struggled for thoughts
before I surrendered
past the transaction
the changeling entrances of
my animal pores are pouring
another sweet of her sharp
intoxication as I
thirst-siren to grasp a mooring

for the next hour
I live to be
her resuscitation
closing the curtain
and amplifying
the night with
what our bodies
were meant to know
as an afterglow
for certain

in all the exhales
and all the exits
I quiet cup
the tea steep
of sate
lingered
with the scent
of my want
and her
still against me
hazy and late
it's August
here

EJR (c)