More than a handful, the way you handle
                    those hips, alabaster
arms akimbo, the monumental-but-
                    gentle kind the cool lines
of which crude sculptors race against nature
                    to master, to define
in tones time’s fugitive stones moonlight rolls
                    over to hide from them

the figure you cut in that Dior dress
                    the silk one with the slits
decadent elegance demanding of
                    twilit skies their shine, of
envious constellations their stars’ famed
                    attention, causing them
to split, the zodiac’s uxorious
                    houses to divide, fate

and fortune to take new wives, that dress your
                    ambling retinue wastes
no effort or expense to emulate
                    when their parties’ guests end
up gossiping about your own entrance
                    instead, fools confounded
as I am whenever your glance scissors
                    a windowless room with

suicide precision, it’s my prison’s
                    flawed blindness that lapis
chalice of your eye incises without
                    remorse, with such force that
subtlety divorces desire and I
                    fight with fury for what
I thirst, wagering eternity for
                    a teardrop, trading my

legend’s immortality for a sip
                    of your sweet mystery’s
casually mythic casuistry, lips
                    forgiving me if, in
my misery, this pen slips from my fist’s
                    grip and, in a fit of
lechery, spills enough filthy secrets
                    to flood this derelict

bedroom burial ground, transgressive and
                    unblessed, anointed with
anything-but-sacred oils soiling this
                    tomb’s shroud when, in my prayers
I digress, complaining to heaven how
                    not having you always
leaves me filled with such an unrelenting
                    sentence of emptiness.