To The Hand Painter Who Goes Offline When I Go Online Poem by RIC BASTASA

i lied
when i said i like your painting
it is a pity
no one
buys it.

the truth is
what i saw in that canvass
was a man deprived of happiness
craving for
sex
but cannot simply accept
that his body
needs it

warmth is not all jacket
it is better
done with skin
to skin
inside a room where you are naked
and so private
with another body looking for that much
needed intimacy
in the middle of this city where
indifference
seems to be the mother of mankind.

i wish sometimes that you better
do a portrait of yourself
in black
and while
sketches
from a sharp charcoal
on a
very white and thick
canvass.