decorum of decadent end...

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 'Crouching Woman with Red Hair' 1897

When two poets crashed the party

when we first spoke

we looked at each other

as if we had just stolen

something neither of us

knew the other was carrying

we heard noises

rolling cacophonous laughter

and what seemed like

goings on with libations

we had heard them through

the paper thin walls

the cheap hot and sticky

leaky ice buckets we kept

knocking over on the way

to the bathroom through

condensates and quiet places

that could not make us

comfortable without

a landscape of sin and skin

we realized then

we were souls

and always would be

spirit beyond the sate

we met online

coyly engaged until

we braved a face to face

we fucked without a word

for hours

I wondered

did she wonder

were we noisy enough

to turn others on

those lovers we had never chanced

those that had caught our glances

those who might have ventured to guess

just how much abandon

we kept inside us

inside the party

there were crackers

Piper Heidsieck 67

velvet robes

and silk ropes

the sofas looked like bedposts

and no one seemed to notice

we had slipped in

from where the smokers adjourned

and returned from their fancy lighters,

ash and inhalation rituals

she looked at me and said

the place was decorated

as if they were listening

waiting for us to finish

weighing their place

in the stains 

we would leave

on each other

they must have known

beyond this evening

each of our poems

wouldn't need our names

EJR ©