Chocolate

Mine is a tragi-comic tale
Of a rare mais vraie merveille:
She plied her trade in a trillion ways –
The chocolate whore of Marseilles.

I saw her first in a drab café
By the sweating, fishy quays.
Dawn’s finger lit my first croissant
As she sipped her neat pastis.

The garçon brought her chocolat chaud
And chocolate bread and cream;
And she dabbed très snob her chocolate lips
And sighed in her chocolate dream.

A seagull fluttered down clumsily
And she fed it a desolate crumb.
What it saw in her eye made it scream and fly:
She plucked a disconsolate thumb.

She caught the garçon’s sideways glance
With a wild and chocolate eye;
And paid, and smiled, and stood, and smoothed
One silken immaculate thigh.

The hot stone swallowed her up, it seemed,
As I scribbled of what fate meant.
She vanished adrift on chocolate legs
In erotic understatement.

I little thought I would see her next
At lunch later that day.
She nibbled a chocolate éclair,
And smiled, and looked away.

Wistful, wanton, willing, weary?
I tried to read her pose
As I jotted my chocolate paragraphs
In captivated prose.

I raised my glass and made to speak
But she shook her head, “No it’s
Not, monsieur, that you’re not my type,
But I don’t just do it with poets!”

The hot sun swallowed her up, it seemed,
As I cursed my harlot’s fate
And my chocolate dreams lay melting
In the fingerprints on her plate.

I little thought I would see her again
At dinner the self-same day –
Dessert: chocolate profiteroles;
To follow: café au lait.

She danced with a man with tattooed hands
And a skull of shaven hair,
With the physique of Toulouse-Lautrec
In the boots of Fred Astaire.

She danced with the grace of a hunting cat
On talons of despair
And I watched her dance for the very last time –
And I left her dancing there.

The hot air swallowed her up, it seemed,
As I sidled with my scroll
And the feline scent of chocolate
Lingered in my soul.

I little thought I would see her again –
At midnight – by the sea –
When they lifted her out of the water:
Naked; drowned; but free:

Blue flashing lights and sirens;
Uniforms galore;
A brief public ovation
For a private chocolate whore.

Whenever I smell hot chocolate
Or catch a glimpse of éclair;
When lips and thighs are dabbed and smoothed,
Or they dance like Fred Astaire;

Whenever a seagull takes to the air
With a scream from the shattered shore,
I wipe my eyes with a tattered sleeve
And the eternal dream of the whore.

The water swallowed her up, it seemed,
But it swallowed nothing at all,
For in my chocolate gourmet dreams
The lady comes to call.