#263: January 11, 2007

No one wants to get caught browsing the aisle
where all the sex books are in the book store.
Discovery yields an embarrassed smile
and sudden fascination with the floor.

Those Kama Sutras, every how-to guide,
the recipes for aphrodisiacs,
go unlooked-at when there's no place to hide
from all those judging eyes that scan the stacks.

They'd not run sensuous fingers down a spine,
remove its dust jacket like lingerie
and probe its secret, innermost designs
for knowledge--God! What would the neighbors say?

And so those tomes sit in their cases yet,
And I thank God there is an Internet.