Pleasing

I, with reckless disregard
for the bile collecting
in my conscience,
settle into a familiar mindless
rhythm I've heard called making love.

This is, at best, playing at love,
as children play house.

This is not even making amends,
cannot be construed as making,
but unmaking.

Your touch-
my god this cannot be pleasure
as you brush away my dead outer layer,
this senseless shell and husk of
memories which litter sheets,
carpets, clothes, drains,-
my new skin I wear like
an infant in a baptismal font
abandoned by its priest.

(copyright a(scetic)verse, April 4, 2009)

Gatortail

We beat it to death
with lead pipes,
crushed its reinforced hydraulic
skull and severed
its whipsnap tail,
and we fried it.
Then we dined
like island royalty,
blood of natives on our hands,
hot on the sacrificial rock,
sizzling in the pan slicked with fat.

(copyright a(scetic)verse, April 4, 2009)

Night Sounds

Night Sounds

We sing and dance in our tribal bliss
and release a songbird from our midst,
out of firelight and into the oblivion of
the empty night. A young boy will often
assume the worst.

We know that the water is deadly- not the
water, no, but what is in it, alligator, green which
yields red and steals a young boy away.

We know that hogs root in these woods,
gobbling grub, and that they scream like
women in fear when an alligator steals them away.

We know all this, but when the discordant
cry of a hog in throes pierces the night
as a gator pierces its belly, a young boy
is just bound to fear for that hours-gone
song-bird, or hours as it always seems to a young boy.

We sing and dance in our tribal bliss
as the songbird perches and joins back in
on that refrain- a young boy is bound to jump
for joy, and riverbilly's bound to keep rockin' tonight.

(copyright a(scetic)verse, April 4, 2009)