love is curtains toward a view

i'm waiting for my turn
on the stage with
the seashell footlights
shining silhouettes
against a cream-colored
scrim

i'm waiting my spotlight -
how can it be so
not simple?

i sit in a bedroom
with white curtains,
a fan oscillating on
a desk, cooling my fever
while behind me is the
bed in which we
made love last night

i can't make my art today
for the humidity and
the brawling children who
are hateful with the heat

you can go,
she says - go
upstairs, you can
go - write

if i were a play's
hero-character today
i would be the one
who left his dreams
for a lover who
hated the lips of life
and sucked from him
passion

until he found the
love in the light of
a caress in the dim
hallway of a theater
playhouse, his
breath stopped
for the sake of
renewal then

my lover told me
recently she might
take up smoking
as a way to lose weight
and my first impression
was how sexy it would
be to watch her purse her
lips around the end
of a cigarette and take
seductive draws

the way women used to
look to me in the movies
of the 40s when
i feigned sickness in
order to skip school
to watch classic movies
on my grandmother's
cable television

behind the white curtains,
out an old screened
window, across a variable
way, is a barn standing fast:
an empty assertion of age
and history

in the leading man
of a show i would make
them all laugh and cry
and they'd send me telegrams
by the fistfuls
if we're following this
sort of nostalgic current

the barn was painted
last year for the old
man who lives there,
who looks out his
window frequently toward
our house, i wonder if he
feels a pull in the
heart when he watches us
making love, missing
his own life-love lost years
ago

the idea makes
me sad and watching
the curtains float
makes me want to
curl beneath the
sheets behind me
and smell her

sometimes love
is curtains toward a
view we're afraid
to see, waving -
sadly parting,
while a fan manufactures
a breeze that we can't feel

that's not true,
i'm being moody
and infatuated with
pity as i sit here

the curtains are
irrelevant

we'll make love
again tonight
and tomorrow
and in a dream,
afterward, i'll
give my monologue
in the dark to
great applause while
she smokes