We are invisible, the artist knows,
To each other: that's why people wear clothes;
It's like the swimsuit "Bwana" Keaton made
In How to Stuff a Wild Bikini : fade
Away flesh, watch itself the rayon climb,
Such is the fault of seeing with the mind.
How else explain our craze for photographs
And video? Are they, don't make me laugh,
The same as real flesh, the breathing truth?
Except we can't see each other, forsooth,
We'd never drool for screens or magazines.
Fade, fade away every face I've seen,
I'll know my love by nightgown she has on
And from which room she's in when rises dawn.

We're blind because we don't see with our eyes;
We see inside our brain. It's no surprise
That on oral histories, pictograms
Printing, and cyberspace the race depends
To convey every utterance and thought,
'Cross boundaries of time, and death, and night,
That ultimately any stick will do
To scrawl our dots and dashes in the goo;
Just let us have a moment we declare
Our unresolved effusions to the air:
The places we've not been or people seen
Except for codes and cyphers in between
Our ears that we can barely comprehend
But summon 'til that final day descends.

And so does artist Antoine stagger in
To neon-chevroned Pennsport Pub during
The lull between one dancer and the next:
Crimea works her phone to read a text
With one foot only barely off the stage,
The deejay's coughed announcement from his cage,
The lowest rung of showbiz has its say,
"From Belarus, [hngh] Olga makes her way."
There she is in white-furred ushanka hat
With flaps loosened and red star on at that,
Looking every bit the Cossack queen
Not like she came from near-flung Kensington,
Garter belt, stockings,thong--all satin white,
On stripper heels her red-tipped toes alight.

Antoine taking a stool along the bar
Almost knocks out a woman's thin cigar,
She flirting with an admiral sitting there,
But watching the newcomer rock his chair
Who's mesmerized by Olga and her strut
And barely gets his drink order slurred out.
"My eyes should click like instant Polaroids
To snap this view!" But Olga is annoyed,
Interrupting her moves to take the bill
His hand extends beyond the fake brass rail.
At this point she's "The Babe" and he's "The Mark,"
Targeted faces pinned to arrow's arc;
Who's in that space doesn't matter a bit
Switch Lee Merriweather for Eartha Kitt.