Plumber Named Beau

Their limbs are knotted, coiled, and sleek.

Their voices are bass instruments: tuba, viol, sousaphone.

They glow with a dangerous sort of light,

dark and deep; red and blue hues.

Eyes like silk, eyes like landscape;

 look into them and you cross desert and valley,

 landing gracelessly in some ugly plane of desire.

There’s one with skin like a sugar cookie,

dusty brown and freckles like cinnamon.

And one with a face like a Grecian god.

It’s not, not their faces, their arms that make you feel.

It lies in there sharp teeth and their sweat,

in their broad, wide, steely smiles,

their coarse hands, made to break things.

Inside of you: those humming, winged things that

make you want to taste whatever they’re made of.

            You can’t, ever. Their animal souls call to other things

that aren’t and won’t ever be you.

But in your stumbling inadequacy you smile without teeth;

these trivialities, the only beauty within or about them.

Their lives are tied to dust; their souls are stung with mediocrity.

            These words bind them to one sputtering moment;

that is all they will ever be.

They sit in the upper left, with their backs to you.

And you gaze on and want with all the pale lilac of your childish soul.

With just as much fervor, the feeling leaves;

scattering petals of stupefied shame in its wake.