Pleasure Palace

I could direct your eye or tapping foot,
direct your ear but I could not direct you here,
a bright green place, the sun flooding leaves
instead of lids, as if I placed them there, in pleasure
of my body and the world, minus body and world,
the relationship left to move bodiless, like a season.
Once, mid-dance, a girl's eyes, like Vaseline,
clarified, rolling to white as if in sudden boil.
She had been mouthing along.
I saw a word taut between her lips and life,
its twisting shape, and I knew
it wasn't solely drugs but her backpedaling,
her posture alone in bed, its embarrassing requests,
clinging to the effluvial, stamped, glittered, lost.