All I Wanted
All I
wanted was to throw myself into the arms of a beautiful woman.
It was the night I went to hear Pony Pondexter.
She was coming up
She hailed me but seemed embarrassed.
She recognized me from high school.
Same graduating class.
I drove the three of us to her place in the Haight.
She took off for her bedroom with the sailor.
I sat on the wall-to-wall carpet, drank vodka and wrote poems.
Perfumed dreams.
She came out her room to tell me she didn’t fuck the sailor.
He fell asleep in a chair getting undressed.
She loves me.
She’s loved me for years.
We’ve been classmates since the third grade.
I can’t place her.
She says she had always thought I was a sharp dresser.
She liked that my socks coordinated with my shirts.
I made that little fold on the waist of my
The Pachuco look.
She loved me, but I couldn’t fuck her yet.
But I could lick her pussy.
And would I help her get back to her sister’s in
Her pimp would be along soon.
I went and got a tire iron from my car for protection.
Her flesh excited me.
I wanted her blood in my veins.
Helped her pack.
Got all the stuff in my car.
Left the sailor on a stained sheet in the false dawn.
Richard Denner is the impresario of dPress
chapbooks, and his Collected Poems: 1961-2000 has been published by Comrades
Press. You are invited to visit his website: http://www.dpress.net