A cigar aficionado

 
He was a retired banker,
and a cigar aficionado
with a white hickory caterpillar-like
moustache over his lips wet from
the glass of whiskey in his hand,
and in the other a Romeo cigar
from which smoke unfurled
the ghosts of Mercutio and Tybalt,
the blood of foes, he said, tasted
dark and truculent but Romeo’s
bittersweetness calmed the quarrel
while Juliet swooped to give
a tender kiss and smooth
the roughness on his lips, though
this kiss could not compare to
the taste of the Little Maiden,
a rare and deviant collection
that he kept in an agarwood box
for this maiden was more precious
than his own daughter’s life, he laughed
and flicked away Romeo’s ashes
and opened the box to reveal hidden
underneath a sheer cloth twenty maidens
resting peacefully on a bed of blue velvet,
one he gently woke and tenderly held,
oh, darling, he cooed, ’tis the time
to make you mine and forever mine,
and was soon slouched on the couch
immobiled by her blissful essence
for he felt on his tongue
the smoothness of her ivory thigh
on which the tobacco leaves
were rolled by expert hands
from knee cap to pelvic hip,
and he sighed a sigh of longing
for that hairless and supple thigh,
now came the taste of something luscious
and pure which this devil’s tongue
could barely endure, panting and sweating,
oh, this fruit whose juice had sealed
this very cigar, he savored and swallowed
as though he drunk it straight from
the maiden’s nether lips, far much better
than pilgrims touching hands, and he swore
he heard her peal of laughter, his caterpillar
moustache had tickled Venus’s mound,
and beside her he shuddered and released
the final stream of smoke, her white dress
swaying and gliding about his reeling head,
and her fragrance like that of a girl skipping
through a prairie field or lying beside
the oceanside, bathing nude in the sunlight,
but the mirage left him nothing more
than the piece of cloth cut from her dress.