The day after International Men's Day

It's International Men's Day.
I am an International Man:
jewel thief, art critic, gun runner,
milk tray chocolate delivery service,
jet set junta dude
who never waits in any queues.

My black polo neck
is festooned with a mauve cravatte
beneath broad satin lapels,
as I drive:
soft top, coast road,
utter disdain for speed limits
and local law enforcement,
their petty jurisdiction trumped
by my espionage credentials.

I send back the wine
at the embassy reception.
It's not corked, I'm creating a distraction.
I garotte the perfidious foreign attache
on the terrace, once he's alone
and lets slip his source,
then pick a rose for my button hole,
basking in psychopathic nonchalance
as I rejoin the assembled dignitaries.

Afterwards
I break and enter the gallery
through an unalarmed skylight
I observed when I cased the place
when writing a piece on Matisse
two months before.
On the way back to the spa
I lift a Matisse or two,
That's the sort of thing I do,

and back at the suite
my helpless conquest succumbs
to cartographies of sex
I map upon Egyptian cotton sheets,
the starting pistol a bottle of Champagne
I open a highly suggestive manner
that she found impressive
and not at all pathetic.

I wake up.
It's the day after International Men's Day.
I am suddenly as fat and impotent
as I am every other day of the year.
My masculinity is now toxic
and I badly need a shower.
The Matisse is an empty pizza box
propped up on unwashed laundry
and I feel like an empty DVD case,

and I see the years of patience
in her eyes, not wanting to forgive me,
as much as waiting for me
to forgive myself.