Red velvet walls, red velvet walls
Faded red velvet takes night from
The hands of poets, carries stories
Carries rhymes to a later stage,
A higher balcony.

A lesser dawn with fewer stars
And fewer stars, with lesser men
And louder cries, breaks mountainscape
Reaching pitches and crescendos
Unheard by lesser ears.

Puccini weeps a newer, colder song
Beneath a colder stone
Brushing red velvet. Virtuoso
Means “Right,” morally right. No virtuousos
Tonight between red velvet.
Nothing virtuous, nothing right.

Cream-colored fat tongue
Rhymes read against red velvet
Reflected, not absorbed, not
Absolved like countless thousands
Of other Italian backdoor sins.

Red velvet rejects, reflects cheap
Rhymes & times & lights, tonight.

~Damien Willis, 05/26/03,
for Puccini’s Golden West Poetry Series

May 26 Red Velvet Walls

Based in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Damien Willis is a newspaper reporter and communications professional. He generally writes about the ways we pass our time in the 21st century.

May 26 Red Velvet Walls

Oct 29 New Mexico's River Cities

Dec 23 Untitled, 12-23-2002

Based in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Damien Willis is a newspaper reporter and communications professional. He generally writes about the ways we pass our time in the 21st century.