on stealing a kiss from the Steve Lady

I thought about returning it--
some lipstick on a page, scented with perversity,
a moving picture of my lips
fifteen frames to flip through

this crush inspires obsession, criminality. I'd stalk you
if I had the attention span,
would send
white roses
dipped in black paraffin
how about a bleached and frozen apple core on a bed of rhinestones

I loved your six foot three expanse
those black crepe scarves draping you
beneath the Comstock's goldmining dioramas
A guard told you "cover up" and I,
pseudo-gallant, escorted you
downstairs
where some old black drunk propositioned you
from the next stall

On the predawn Reno streets we were
verbally harrassed.
I didn't mind it.

At the suite of black faux marble and cocaine-dusted glass
steam rising from the jacuzzi and blurring the
ceiling mirrors
you dropped your scarves and revealed all
the romance revelation can bear

I loved you bony, tall, sneering
as you were immortalized by the painter
I loved your pseudodefenselessness, memory of which
sustained me through rough, dry dawn sex

then came my crime spree:

weeping in that dismal Holocaust comedy.
expressing alarm at the protruding bone at your knee
which turned out to be no injury, no deformity
only the natural sneer of your body--
I would have held it, kissed it fifteen times
(I called the chicken tuna; didn't know The Creatures) had I
been forgiven

The stolen kiss: you thanked me, you fled. I thought:
it seemed permissible, it was filmed--