Salvatore Difalco

Kink

No, not talking armor here. Brother Johnny
owns an antique armored suit he stands
by his front door like a sentry with a million
mile stare. It’s been through some things,
it happens. But that’s not what I mean.
Brother Johnny also collects second hand
women’s shoes. I know, I know. It’s funny
in a way. But he doesn’t wear the shoes.
He swears he doesn’t wear the fucking
shoes. So what he does with them demands
a deeper look: we’ll never judge a book
blah blah blah. On the other hand a crook
would better know what to do with a safe.
Cracking it isn’t an option, Brother Johnny
keeps it tight in the crib and doesn’t play
around with snoopers or two-bit looters
or thieves who want a taste of the honey.  
What do you say, Brother Johnny, is it olfactory
in nature? If so I understand, to a degree.
That whiff of rot and fungal dust and death.
Also the shape: the remnant impression
of a woman’s foot, yum yum, for fetishists
among us, and shoes, however unsavory,
cannot charge the connoisseur for transgression.
And if this strikes the consumer of poetry
as a subject not worthy of pursuit or expression,
let me remind you that we were once eggs
waiting for completion, waiting for entry
into the bubbling universe, so that we could
say we were there, and that we wanted
to see and feel and breathe it all, taste it all, 
hear every peep and pop and smell every 
atom of it without prejudice or fear.