To those whom it may concern, and not just those of pedigrees,
standing in the sundown colonnade, watching stolid shadows,
as they elongate before the sun--- and create golden filigrees,
on the moire and satin, and the hemp clothes like coarse meadows;

I---silly me---write this poem for you.

She wears these cerulean aviators, filling the sockets of her eyes;
like Dante said the damned wore, those crystal visors of their tears.
And as a gentleman I find it comprising, to sing sonnets of surprise;
and certainly a gentleman would not burden you with his fears.

But I thought I would never figure, anything else about that woman,
besides those colorful, translucent lenses, dominating her visage,
and the shadows of bridges the frames cast, and maybe I shouldn't,
divulge the image to simians, that behind the lenses were prisons,
and those cast shadows were its bars.

Because though eloquent and well-too-kept, I was, perhaps,
not well-too-bred,
because my limbs are far too gangly and my head far too large,
and many would peg me freak, the kind that feeds pigeons bread,
the kind that, oh so simple, would cast tendrils from their hearts,
and maybe catch that perfect catch,
the woman that could fetch the perfect men,
and the freaks who, in their deformities, show how beauty starts.

But of myself, I have said far too little, and certainly indulgent,
I could paint descriptions of my tangerine hair and my nimble fingers,
which, once catching a butterfly's wing, would be quick to have sold it.
And those fingers, they keep working, as long as the shadows linger.

So I saw this beauty
(who was this beauty?)
whose gait I couldn't quite recall, which is quite perplexing,
because when it comes to such things, I'm certainly eidetic,
and my memory retains the face of a thousand radiant maidens,
and it is the type of sepulchre that you can catch the saints in.

And perhaps I am just a romantic, hungry for the pedantic,
and it...

"Sir?"

I paused. "What?"

"Sir, are you going to buy those glasses? You look like you're about to steal that mannequin and take it back to your place. They are feminine, but whatever your taste is..."

"Mannequin?"

"Mhm."

"Damn."