Rp Verlaine lives and writes in New York City. He has an MFA in creative writing from City College and taught English in New York public schools until he retired. His first volume of poetry, Damaged by Dames & Drinking, was published in 2017 and a second collection, Femme Fatales Movie Starlets & Rockers, in 2018. A set of three e books titled, Lies From The Autobiography 1-3 followed in years 2018-2020.

Before Confession

Disloyal romantics 
we collect for evidence 
the residual lipstick 
traces each of our wide mouths 
have spit out with such disdain. 
 
Our accelerated breathes 
desires errant messengers 
increasing with each kiss. 
 
Taking off her boots 
see my face in the leather 
drunk and blurred. 
 
We do not look once. 
at the large silent crucifix 
upon the wall as if judging. 
 
Her silhouette 
unmatched in the darkness 
I am half sure 
during the prolonged intimacy 
where my eyes remain closed. 
 
I never hear her leave 
her boots make not a sound 
Like Armenia’s Saint James the silent 
his tongue still for years. 
 
Blushing I offer prayers 
6 a.m. the church is still closed 
But lapsed in faith and belief 
I will wait at the doors 
I have much to confess. 

Tedium Fails To Blink

Reading her mind 
skipping 
several chapters 
 
The illusion 
she presents 
to make things clear. 
 
Yet she hides 
in each embrace 
thinking of her X. 
 
Sending me cryptic 
messages with 
a daunting silence. 
 
From different rooms 
we watch the total 
eclipse feeling it. 
 
Accusations  
flying back and forth 
like lost acrobats. 
 
Just another thing 
to repair with whiskey 
till it doesn't work 
 
Rehearsing death 
before going to hell 
is all we know. 

Smashed Chairs and Broken Glass

At 39, she had it all together the way few women do. 
Spoke a different language while using the same words as I. 
Wasn’t constantly looking at her phone like the younger ones 
who can only be in love with rejection or chaos. 
 
Said Bukowski was her favorite poet till she read my books. 
I wanted to believe her but her eyes were impenetrable, and 
Every step she took spoke of the distance to come. When  
after visiting desire’s trapdoors, I’d be left with smashed 
whiskey bottles and broken furniture. Destroyed without 
solace by both love and undying rage. 
 
But that first night, we stripped near the door and I  
took her four times standing up, on each wall in her  
studio. She screamed as if she was the victim of lust 
at a crime scene. Later telling me, I had made her feel 
something different and long forgotten. 
 
To that I say Perhaps. Yet weeks later, I ended up 
being right about the whiskey bottles and the 
broken furniture.