though my body has been canvased

by other men since you've gone

your traces still linger in the folds

and quiet spaces

where only souls venture in the silent

dawn of a sunday morning

meticulously erased

like rauschenberg to a dekooning

you've been framed and labeled

placed on a pedestal;

you no longer dilate seamlessly into the horizon.

stained in memory and in sheets

with marksman acuity

you linger in the passings

of every other old spiced man

and then of course

there was that night that i unwittingly

clung to his brazen chest

only to draw the surrogate aroma

deep into my diaphragm,

eyelids like lead of Serra,

respiring recycled reminiscence

on a curfew

hoping construct would give way to calling

but the body cannot lie like lips

spread like lies

nor quip like minds