His face offers hope ripening
like a big green apple when he
falls eagerly forward through
the door into her house, sees
there a table, an incongruous
arrangement of granite fruit in
a bowl, sees also some sorrowful
birds mistaken for lilies, their
feet fastened deep inside a vase,
their hopeless eyes, the tragic
helplessness of their wings, and
it all sets his teeth painfully on
edge, to be quite frank, you see.

As an artist, he was all ready to
fall in love but then he looked
up and saw a woman surprised, too
crudely formed out of pinewood,
only half painted, rooted deep
into the stone tiles of your floor,
flagrantly sucking power out of
the earth, one sly black-hole eye
deflecting sky.

So "ceci n`est pas" a sincere smile
and this is not a lover`s kiss.

04/17/2019