audacity to clarify

"Back!"

I yelled low, like a voice
inside. 

"baby got,"
I additionally, gamely
supplied, lamely but
not enough 

for pride. ("Baby got"
was not done to make "back"
lamer, but as if to ensure
she would not think she'd picked up
a lion tamer, stalking her now
from back behind, with a chair 
in hand and no doubt a whip 
somewhere) 

These things must needs 
be said, or they shan't 
be gotten or pointed out! 

See, I'd spied and referred
(by the safe word "back")
to a fair specimen of the same, 
no flaw, no lack - this was, 
that day,
a sort of ideal 
made real in the classic sense:

a back. 

So sleek visually contoured
it made my eyes feel. You know,
"backless dress" is not really
the word for that. It's backful
as hell, way more than most
dresses! This subtly-muscular
dorsally-sweeping expanse 
playing hide and sweep 
with her tresses rose up
from above those two dimples
some have, like dents
like eyes, if the gluteal cleft
were a nose (a drawn line,
picture it) and who knows
what the mouth would be?

The undercuppage of the buttocks? 

I laughed! I couldn't see these 
making a mouth. But oh, what 
a nose though. I would would beep
that nose, I suppose. I suppose 
too much
I might always beep a nose 
too much - enough!
The point! 

It's a back I meant! 
Not to take her aback
from behind, just
a word of assent
to the fact her back
was remarkable. 

And she knew it, or 
had just been informed. 
It was cool! I did really
not have to go on, "clarify." 
For sure.
But I did.
I had flung Mixalot
in the mix to dispel the whole
lion-tamer routine I'd inadvertently
raised from a cub, now risen rampant,
soon to a rampage, bub! 

I had to do something.

"Got back!"

I supplied cheerfully!

Know this. Not one word 
of my clarification 
was lion. All that big
cat stuff was implied
by the chair and the whip 
which I ditched 
just before she turned,
and kindly laughed 
in my face, as usual. It 

was one of our in-jokes. I 

was the setup man. Fed her 
a line, and she punched it. 

I hadn't quite explained yet 
what had just happened out 
loud, though, so:

"In the classic sense of 'back,'"
I lamely gamed. And:

"...And probably in the presumptuously
-familiar (unwarranted) sense of 'baby,'"
(which was duh and no duh in one, by
that point, since she'd already given her
"All's-well,-Whew!" laugh - but it was 
too late by laugh-time, as I'd already thought
to say this, and as it's the thought that counts,
and as further it'd already passed check-stage,
stamped 'go,' I felt it a waste to mount an
appeals process. So I said it!)

(Having also by this point as you note
completely lost any sense or pretense
of incorporating inner monologue
with outer dialogue (hope sprung
foolish, there) as a half-uttered
half-thought rhyme scheme, weaving
an epic narrative poem fit to get caught
up in, perchance). (Bold attempt

as usual, but lost the thread - apparently.)

"...but it was necessary-"

I continued, justifiably needlessly 

"-to complete an allusion to one of a
justly-bygone era's then-popular songs, which
were always of course a bit risqué."

I triumphantly paused.

Then the capper 
(just in case):

"If apology is offensive, I apologize." 

I had been perfecting my hurt look, 
and wow. Still some sweet, sweet
perfecting to do on that one