TORMENTING HIMSELF

Was this the only moment of love?
- caught in a cold snap?
Leaden tease,
lock-jawed in quaint reminiscences,
unwrapped, sullen goodbyes?

He sat alone,
a crumple, embittered repose,
the fetching of haunted kisses,
feeding this resilient hunger -
a tempest of some stormy dreams.
Tapestry of life eaten away,
into greedy little moth-holed
hours, laid tattered waste.
Still -
dangling the rotted carrot of youth
before wrinkled, shallow simpers,
clotted by constricting temptations.

The acrid perfume of tobacco,
drilled sooty holes between his crooked lips.
How they twitched.
Sour. Smoky.
The brooding chimes,
of forgotten summers cast off
in funneled gusts of the Autumn brittle.

Rigid, settling into his armchair,
with only one fresh memory,
that pretty young thing
whose smile once ascended
from his stiffening knee,
tormented pleasures of his company.