AUBADE

 

 AUBADE

Aurora, arch or whorish, spreads herself thin,
the horizontal, divine, clean gal, I mean,
and whorish I say because so rosily
posed, so photogenic, she reclines,
stretches herself like laundry hung out to dry,
while, Maudeline, lechery's itching my eye-
balls and lids seedily... those aren't underclothes,
but clouds, skimpy cirri, floozy's gauze,

she apparels herself blushing in, and lies
as earliest cars to the world sigh and buzz.
What's squintily dawning on me, Maudeline?
Prior to real sunrise her shame's a tease
over each erect and horrent pining pine,
so early birds chide and horrifically keen
"break it up" to us past the out-of-place moon.
Day will, like cops, break into our room,

since Aurora will betray anybody.
Pink-fingered, she—antiseptically sexy,
just, above frustrated traffic, half-undressed
strokes, strokes, as the banker strokes money,
and Maudeline, she'll put the finger on us,
it's time to shove off, love, for cash and the rush.
What's in my eye?  Aurora and dollar signs.
Love, ourselves we're losing as we come clean,

because only love's blind.  But blinded by light,
as autos give up the ghost in parking lots,
as industrious birds, hemming and hawing,
work and scold, the quotidian's sold and bought.
Dollar, dolorous, voluptuous new things...
I'm reddening.  Who's singing?  Darling, so long.
Aurora, bourgeois whore, gazes at, unfazed,
us: nightingales in a stateside zoo.

Jack Hayes
© 2010

This poem originally appeared in Timbuktu