Single Malt / Crimson Lips

Don’t look for consistency when

asking about his identity:

he’s a cross between himself

and a stranger he has never met.

Sure feeling like a million sterling

and then some change,

the whisky in his belly

sets him in the path

of a spectral dame.

Begging for the freedom

to just pick up and leave,

by introduction he hopes

to conquer this dimensionless beast

simply born of the syllogism

of the dancefloor rhythm

and the flash of a chandelier.

Alien to mortal existence,

her skin is a wondrous tapestry

of infinite colour and complexity,

stained indelibly by a dress

that would look the height of fashion

on any other woman.

Bored of having every whim answered,

every degenerate wish granted,

she forces he pay the theft

of living in the crowded

miser’s den of private ego.

An unimaginable force keeps

this sybarite inexplicably

anchored to observable reality.

He should have been thrown out by now

but instead stands as an impertinence

to their unstated lust, tight

in the jaw, clutching an expensive single malt.

A dilettante of the vilest crime

imaginable, she tortures him

with the peculiar imagery

of crimson lips blooming

on her stony expression.

They assess each other’s

lurid intentions, painfully

aware of the suffocating

emptiness of impatience.