Eating Invisible Pasts: For Eliot and Baudelaire

I stroke my cock

to the jagged rhythm

of the syllables,

their meaning smeared

to indecipherable loss.

I luxuriate in the

stagnant waters

of a nostalgia

for something

that never was.

Its bitterness

turned with age

to cloying aphrodisiac,

its depths to

languid quicksand.

The paralyzing

elixir of love.

Fixed in the contemplation

of a happier ending

to a story I wrote

in the madness

of longing.

If only.