MAN OR BEAST ..

     I opened my eyes this morning, lowered my feet to the floor, while the TV blared its program at me.  But, I was oblivious.  All I thought of was you. 

     They were innocent, longing visions of your face and the expressions that made me gather you in my heart, whenever your solemn beauty broke into a smiling siren, where your teeth flashed and your eyes crinkled, alongside a slightly wrinkled nose. 

     My mind’s eye took a step back to consume itself with you.  Immediately, it drew closer to your short cropped hairdo with its SHORT top-knot ponytail held neatly in a thin rubberband on the crown of your head; a tiny fountain that begs to have my fingers play with it.   But, I dare not.  So, the scan of you continued.  The slow study of what I know of you in person. The glance I take, when you aren’t looking back .. when your attention’s diverted, captured by something .. else.  I use this time to focus on what isn’t mine to behold in detail at a quieter time .. the short, crooked blue vein, barely visible at your temple .. the length of your lashes, the pure pale hue of your delicate creamy skin, the pink of your lips and how they stretch perfectly into an unexpected grin, which you speak through .. and as you do, the miniscule movements of your brows.

     I sought to know you more, once these tiny secrets emerged to me. With small talk and opportunity, I slid like a light breeze as close as I could to you .. seeking more of you .. without revealing the size and depth of my desire for you.  But, I knew.  It weighed on me greatly, this hurricane of happiness that pelted my veins with surging waves of need to engulf you.  But, you only saw a man .. calm and deliberate .. seating himself at your table.  No obvious threat to you noticed.  His questions were sly, sandwiched in casual exchanges .. seemingly spontaneous.   But, in his head, he was building a lover, weighing the measure of you that you were willing to expose to him. 

     A wiry wish wrapped its route around my heart and wove you securely to my secret thoughts of feeling you against me.  Any patch of our frames would do.  Perhaps our cheeks brushing, while my whispered words mapped out a tender intimacy to your precious ear or our lips too close to not know a kiss could seal the possibilities of two destinitys crossing paths.  Such haunting halucinations render a man’s heart to racing beats that drum in every vein carrying a message of you throughout him.

     All the while you sit before him .. a being to be encountered .. a desire captured for a crucial moment .. a dream in sight with his impatient passions gated inside him by convention and the conflict of man over beast.  To be beast would be so much easier, if we made our own rules. We DO shoot mad dogs!

     So, I listened to you answer me.  Each angled nibble of you revealed, squirreled away to the puzzle of us in my head .. and I kissed each piece, before placing it.  In the meantime, I spoke to you words of love and commitment, desire and denial, in my head and prayed a hint of my anxiety would escape through my eyes to yours. 

     These impromtu meetings, arranged by chance, unearthed a few of your greatest drawbacks, but for me they meant little.  Beauty IS in the eye of the beholder and I found their significance relevant only in that you held these views and I needed to respect that.  I didn’t need to buy into them, though, and I didn’t.  Even if you’ve had children and the experience has left you with a rounded belly .. no longer flat flesh hung on pelvic posts for a man’s head to lay north of your sensuous mound.   It doesn’t matter to me, for I can still hear your heart beating within.  The view would afford me a greater glance of you that included your luscious limbs with the powerful thighs that climb my own to grip my hips in their vice, while heels hammer my nail into place.  Oh, I could live with a belly like that to plant kisses on and bite feverishly.

     I understand your reservation.  What else is keeping your ‘not nineteen, anymore’  body from being pleasured passionately?  It isn’t worth uttering ‘I’m not twenty-five, anymore’ someday .. or thirty or fourty!

     You’ve already discouraged me.  We’ve hit the nail on the head.  But, I still want you .. in whatever form you take.  The man is waiting .. and thinking, devising, fantasizing and desiring.  The beast .. is always HUNGRY!