cubistpoet

Knights in White Satin

They said I reeked of purity,
said the word pure as if were dirty,
and the irony did not escape me
even as I inspected for vapor trails of
white steam shooting out of my ears
like a poor cartoon imitation of reality
drawing fluffy ink blot clouds of
paladins and noble steeds and Britny Spears's virginity
across the mind's sky of all watching eyes.

I said, "Fuck 'em", tapped off the keg
and sat comatose watching couchfuls of
smoking pipes and groping hands,
cock-blocked irregular Romeos,
sluts of a million fading hairstyles,
and I smiled and laughed and laughed and smiled.
Even a corpse could have fun at a party this wild.

But my half-dead-to-the-world mask of innocence
only fooled the jesters and the playa's,
the storytellers and candle-stick makers.
To others it was a lost jigsaw piece
to a puzzle not yet built,
a hint in an unwritten choose your own
adventure true-story Hallmark drama,
a question mark, a confusion.

I looked at you and I knew
that you could read my eyes,
read my eyes like poetry,
like Picasso, like Edgar Allen Poe.
What twisted tale did they spin for you?
Did you read a didatic tale of Christian purity?
Or did you read something more like... me?

You said, "I don't know."
"I don't know about a lot of things."
But knowing that you don't know is half the battle,
and the mystery is the ecstasy of anticipation
that keeps us turning the next page and writing the next line
just to find out what happens next.

And tonight if what happens next isn't sex
then riddle me this:
Is that called purity or maturity?