Mulholland Drive

～a poem by Donald Rawley

It's midnight on Mulholland Drive.   
You and I race   
beyond the guard rails  
where coyotes kiss  
under sudden red warnings. 

I am a raven haired whore  
trapped in a fast,  
black Jaguar,  
a smear on the windshield. 

I am a deliberate masquerade.  

My house is scrubbed with rum.  
In an airless bedroom  
I watch for you  
on bed sheets  
lousy with lies. 

You, with clinical blue eyes  
and a surgeon's lips;  
you are the time of my life;  
you are a back door kiss. 

You hiss and spray,  
your chest dancing  
like a lazy debutante,.  
Your whisper is cool and false  
as a eunuch's tongue. 

This is delicious guilt,  
tended wisely,  
with hothouse tactics  
complex in mute rule. 

I have grown my tom cat garden  
with expectant palms,  
a blind moon,  
and clenched thighs. 

I can stretch my claws  
and assassinate memory. 

This tryst opens my skin,  
a painted wound,  
pornographic and hollow.  
This is ancient folly,  
elusive, and moist  
as a burial ground. 

It's midnight on Mulholland Drive.  
In my house above the rain clouds  
I wait for you  
with dark glasses  
in a mirrored room. 

We have always understood the immediate.  
You and I. 

          *  

I lay by you in  
this tinny blue gulf  
of conquered air  
in the last frieze  
of our static night. 

Your pant invades  
the morning damp  
in hot twisted acacia,  
in tethered reeds near  
steaming, still-lit swimming pools. 

You are the curl of fog  
hiding my naked ache.  
I want the sting  
of your arms  
and the music  
of your concrete pulse. 

I've smelled this dawn before. 

It's black leather and angora,  
broken glass, and burned-out bulbs. 

I fear your perfume  
and the itch of your blonde beard,  
fat, and petulant  
as your probing loins. 

My memory is  
acid and salt.   
I store your face  
in a box of  
tortoise and ebony. 

It is a delirious face  
wanton and marked with my breath.  
You stretch with the ease  
of a hypocrite.  
You say nothing when you come. 

Touch my back of oiled wood.  
I have the wet hide  
of a transient.  
I am all bedroom eyes, weak teeth,  
and shaked out legs. 

I will polish your hips  
into powder.  
I will make your ass a movie star. 

I can be bought. 

       *  

It's rattlesnake season on Mulholland Drive. 

They are the percussion  
of the Santa Ana,  
odalisques of night,  
a swarm of heavy bellies  
rubbing the cool grit  
of a dark, dry road.  

Coiled on limestone verandahs,  
under oriental rock borders,  
and behind electric gates,  
the sleep beyond the sprinklers. 

Do not walk this  
road of constant turns,  
you can't follow the  
squirm of the yellow line. 

You drive from the west  
from cliffs rotten  
with dim sunsets.  
You enjoy speeding east,  
entering my soil and shade. 

I fall into your skills.  
You with the rolling muscles  
of an anaconda,  
with a pure kiss,  
exact as a bite.  
I am lost in your  
treacherous limbs. 

I sit on Mulholland Drive  
amidst pines and lemon trees,  
grouped like school children.  
I am always alone. 

        *  

Baby I can keep secrets  
like jewels in a velvet case.  
I am the endless cirque,  
the lure of the flowered rope,  
and padded swing.  
I seldom give everything. 

I want to flutter  
your eyelids when you sleep.  
I want to make  
your solitary pounding  
a bracelet that fits. 

I want to meet your wife.  
You and I, cagey and right.  
I want to feel her eyes  
like a blind prophet.  
I am cruel with   
embraces and promises. 

And I with boxes and mirrors  
and jewels and glances that run,  
I still wait,  
watch for your car. 

You who drives without headlights,  
you who sheds color;  
you are she slam of a cadillac door,  
you are the last twist in the road;  
you are the shine of speed  
and the trouble with virgins;  
the reason I sit with my body  
and cry,  
the history I repeat,  
the sunsets and oceans I sometimes see  
when the day is clear of you,  
when my nights are stuck  
between your legs,  
and my mornings are full of fog. 

You ask me who I am.  
I am more than enough.


(For more of Donald Rawley's writing including poetry and short stories, visit here.)