Little Boy Blue: Bohemian Poet Wainwright sings the life of a damaged dandy by Lorraine Ali      If you love listening to the sensitive singer-songwriter who taps your deepest feelings in so many heart-wrenching lines, Rufus Wainwright is not your man. The pouty-lipped song of folk royalty Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle is far too self-absorbed to care about reaching the inner you. Instead, he's the witty scenester spotted bantering with celebrities at the most fabulous parties. The foppish, tortured artist who looks like a Kenneth Cole model. Frankly, the dashing 27 year old is not interested in speaking to you because he's looking over your shoulder at something, or someone, far grander.      That's why his second album, "Poses," finds Wainwright in his element. Appropriating the spirit of a Broadway music, he spins the tale of a creature very much like himself: a handsome gay man who comes to New York to be recognized as the star he knows he is. But the character soon becomes lost in his own desire and ego, his lofty aspirations melting into a swill of alcohol and self-loathing. He hits the city in a "red fetching leather jacket," degenerating into the tousled mess who's "drunk and wearing flip-flops on Fifth Avenue." His love for excess eventually finds him living a life sustained by cigarettes, chocolate milk, and the company of down-and-out drag queens.      Wainwright's quavering, melodramatic voice adds cabaret-style highs to "Poses," while his weary, lilting moments keep the album grounded. His lyrics are literate, witty and biting, making him a writer more in line with Oscar Wilde or Cole Porter than any of his guitar-strumming contemporaries. The lyrics are the stars here, and the music reels behind them like the moving scenery in an old music-hall production. Plucky piano pieces (a staple throughout the album) and subtle orchestration back confessions of his destructive, decadent tendencies: "Everything it seems I like is a little bit sweeter, a little bit fatter, a little more harmful for me. Then there's those other things that for several reasons we won't mention." When the jet-setting mess goes to California, bongoes, tambourines, and acoustic guitar back his observations: "big time rollers, part-time models, so much to plunder that I think I'll sleep instead." A trip to Paris finds him lost and singing in French about a hazy infatuation with the enigmatic "Rebel Prince": "Where is my master the rebel prince? Back breaking trying to get to me in this two-bit hotel."      "Poses" gracefully and painfully documents the world of the romantic megalomaniaic. The self-imposed drama, the shallow goals, the need to self-destruct in a gorgeous way. And then there's the final waking moment that never seems to come. Instead the character asks, "Please be kind if I'm a mess." You oblige because he's fascinating, knowing all the while that's it's a nicety Wainwright would never afford you. From June 2, 2001