Gigolo

Gigolo

—for Sylvia Plath

Pimp noir, I trick rather well—

I’m your typical lounge lizard, my dear

Cruising nightly with nothing to hide

It’s best we meet in a cul-de-sac tho

Gigolos are maniacal caricatures—

Doomed by their own narcissistic

Obsessions, afflicted with unstable

Notions of self & delusory aspirations

My palace of fine red velvet—

My condo full of endless mirrors with
An attic full of aging portraits while

Below I’m completely self-contained

No photographs of my lovers—

No rings in my ears, no camp

Professional gigolos are tres serious 
When Mr. Green talks, we listen intently 

Rich sugar daddies gulp at my bulk—

Here I am in my swank tuxedo

Sipping martinis and acting bored

Slippery and carnivorous as a shark

I’m a rather chic seedy Narcissus—

A malevolent Pepé Le Pew who poses

Like a vain exceptionally proud peacock

Unlike the self-effacing Miss Prufrock

I distance myself from lovers—

And emotional attachments to anybody

I’m like a self-sustaining aloof magnolia

Draped with decadent Spanish Moss

I’m rather happy alone here in my—

Seductively baroque kitschy bordello

Adjusting to my latest sagging face lift

With blasphemous aging panache

Sexuality is a threatening presence—

I avoid bright sharp claws of older men

Avoiding their lips and touch if I possibly

Can avoid their ubiquitous tacky menace

Increasingly crass and hyperbolic—

About my violent power over men

Whose jellyfish-lips sting me

They plead for my aphrodisiac squid

And there is no end, no end to it—

Gigolos never grow old, they end up

Shrieking to themselves alone at night

Glittering away in some Fontainebleau 

Some large dumpy royal châteaux—

Gratified by all the years of pimping

Reclusive by some lavishly decorated

Pool done in the mannerist style

Ceaselessly admiring themselves—

In their palatial, disreputable bordellos

Full of superficiality & deadly narcissism

Tenderly leaning & gazing at themselves