Dorian Gray

Don’t stare too long; lest shadows ’round his eyes
Imbibe your soul. Don’t linger on his mouth,
The petals of his pout. Don’t sympathize
With milk; his skin like silk. Don’t be devout.

Look and note forever how cornsilk hair
Asserts itself e’rmore, like a stroke
Of paint brushed by one who could not care
If art is beauty or a cosmic joke.

Take all the time you need when he is gone
To press your head against some velvet thought–
Some notion divined, ever lin’gring on,
Discarded and reserved, escaped and caught.

His youth is not the youth you meant to find
Here on the edges of your mortal mind.

-Amanda Scott

September 25, 2007