A Portrait of the Lover

by Eric Rose

 

I.  A Portrait of the Lover as a Porn Star 

Because you saw me naked and virile as a new appliance;
Because you jogged with the angels and rode God's escalator;
Because you were a light far off, wearing the sun's corona;
Because I loved you like a clean, white dishrag;
Because you bent me over like a rainbow and filled me with dew;
Because we are every one of us purveyors of the sublime;
Because I was too shy to tell you my wet dreams were about you;
Because it was a glory-hole sort of romance;
Because love shares the same economics as any human endeavor;
Because every man is an island, we build boats to wreck ourselves on foreign shores.

II. A Portrait of the Lover as a Cult Leader 

Once you held me like I was every Jesus that died hungry in the streets;
Once my expectations grew big as a beanstalk overnight;
Once you cradled me like a telephone receiver;
Once I stuffed you inside me like chocolate cake;
Once you were as vital as any instrument of God's will;
Once I thought love could straddle two worlds;
Once you were as distant and unattainable as better times;
Once you sang the moon and the stars and the cosmonauts into orbit;
Once you told me God must ultimately take responsibility for everything;
Once you had no edges, just a million faultless surfaces.

 

III. A Portrait of the Lover as an Insomniac 

Although the night brings forth vermin like poppies;
Although a memory is but an imperfect snapshot;
Although you whispered needles in my flesh as patiently as any seamstress;
Although you consumed me carelessly, like an American;
Although we all must dance in the flames sometime, if only in our own minds;
Although life is precious, still its long list of needs can become tedious;
Although the crude force of our desire was a hammer battering soft flesh;
Although on the 8th day God created the Bogey Man;
Although God and his angels are in heaven, everything else is here on earth.

IV. A Portrait of the Lover as a Witness for the Prosecution 

If I choose to number my days through the smoke-stained filter of a cigarette;
If I could stop giving out love like a Coke machine;
If you bundled me up like refuse;
If I pulled my veins out of my sleeve by the yard like a circus clown;
If sex didn't make everything as complicated as a mother's lie;
If we could forget to become our fathers for just a day;
If there was cyanide in the Kool-Aide;
If you had the surgeon's daring to know me from the inside out;
If you unsexed me quick as a zipper;
If I wasn't acting hysterical, I was being hysterical.
 

V. A Portrait of the Lover as a Serial Killer 

For I know that when life comes for me I shall be alone and reading a book or a 
        newspaper;
For when you lost me you sent out a thousand excuses to comb the countryside;
For my journey to you was as short and accidental as a bad fall;
For you stopped up the well of my happiness like a cheap toilet;
For the lies, the abuses and the betrayals will remain long after we've both snuck out of 
        the room;
For all those years, and you were only saving me like a receipt;
For leaving you was as easy as changing my skin;
For eventually everything unravels and we all must dangle.