BY THE HOUR

...awakenings, too late“Whores make the best lovers…
technically speaking, of course.”
He ponders alone,
in sweet bundled repose,
imagining the trickle of sweat
from his burning forehead
wiped clean as a thousand tongues
their supple sticky juices
changing chemistries mingled
with passionate acrylic finger tipped scars,
proudly displayed
across his arching back.
“Their eagerness to please…”
he explains to no one,
“…for a modest fee.”
- pleasure per cost distilled
more blissful than truths
or that filthy harlequin
promised romances
strung like beads
tightening about his tickling parched throat.

How thoroughly satisfying then?
How now?
To pry these dead memories
self professed
the boulevardier cut adrift,
impaled and pricking
on the sour gnash of repayment.
Thrust into the dry filthy crust of dawn
lucid and cold
with prying eyes
and probing inquiries –
a different sort,
into each deep sunken crevice
starched over by a frosting of saliva:
dire price tag
coughing up wish fulfillments
for compassion only,
any hint of warmth,
or perhaps
- merely death
and a soft Dresden arm
to lay upon these corrupted entrails,
trading insatiable needs
for the dull prick
from a physician’s needle.
“Technically speaking…of course.”
@Nick Zegarac 2007 (all rights reserved).

NEVERMORE

Craggy rocks of nevermore,
beckon the stifling tang
noon day rising,
through narrow vapor slits
thick clot of filtered humidity.

Raw, crushed
plates of fragmenting haze
cut Ceylon shadows into starfish
perforating hallucinations.

These parched scroll exteriors -
gape their hungry mouths,
in prickly thistle spires,
tucked fruitlessly bare,
until the only distant mirage
- humpbacked mountains,
dot paradise's
blistering cloves.
The pungent dust fragrance
of petrified death…
is inhaled by yon weary,
asphyxiated traveler…
succumbing to that last wheeze
like an old concertina in his knapsack
– punctured,
struggling in low sustained booms
one upon hyphenated next.

Unseen,
a speck concentrated under noon day’s sun
pulverized against nature’s anvil
beckoning toward stifled tang
from craggy rocks
thick filtering humidity
…then,
nevermore.
@Nick Zegarac 2007 (all rights reserved).

LAST SUPPER

She thought intensely on it now,
on that other fellow,
on this one,
how she had betrayed him,
so completely,
such utter lack of remorse.

No splash of shame
from exposed, sweaty pores,
breading his halibut
dutifully
as though,
stain of ruby wine kisses
had not tainted her.

Imagining – proudly
daydreaming even,
that cold slender insertion of metal
twisting inside the lock.
“Honey, I’m home…”
…only to discover her note,
next to another perfect meal
by the phone.
a ‘please don’t call me
– ever again’
scribbled in frenetic excitement.

Note pad sticky, egg batter
faint tang of lemon rind -
garnishing little more
than she might do,
sun shedding its grace
too obvious -
across flour-dust counter top.

No plans for intrusion…
…but it comes.
thick gooey ooze
curdled mixture
frying battered fillets,
perfection – in a skillet at least -
both reminder
and farewell.

Arranged so neatly
bitter hint of parsley
beaded glass, homemade tea
one cloth napkin pressed into service,
everything else purged into the washer
- almost.
Nothing left to consider –
small comfort of clean up.
She smiles,
pitching apron and mitts
remnant domesticity aside
trading Limoge for lip rouge
‘Boy’, she reasons,
emptied handbag slung over strutted shoulder,
‘When I cook I sizzle,
But when I lie, I really bake!’

@Nick Zegarac 2007 (all rights reserved).