Those Tightrope Lips Poem by Pasha Satara

Oh, baby,
you're somewhere on the road
with the windows open wide to the cold,
in a pickup truck
that needs a paint job it will never get,
your hand on the left knee of a new woman,
because we are all new women to you,
w/a junkyard dog slobbering excitement
out the window.

Early this filmy morning,
you jerked off
in a white-tiled crusty shower,
before you washed your body down
& while the steam was high.

Then you took your no-butt,
varicose-webbed legs to pad
barefoot & oblivious
over a dirty linoleum floor
to make muddy coffee.

You stood at the side door
in decorated boxers
while your hairy dog
pissed all over the bare soil
you call your yard.

Funny, but damn,
I can't remember
the look of your toes...
but I can feel
those thin, tightrope lips
you never opened in a real kiss,
like hard salami,
or the splintered crosses
at the graveyard of your many ghosts.