The Dam

‘

It is midnight here.

There are mating calls between terse sheets,

their smothered sniggers are rolling

into uplifted thunder and feline yowls

unfurling deep into the shadows,

leaving scratch marks like the badges

of courage on this sexual landscape

now, raw and ominous of battle

‘

Hands are clenched together,

knuckle-bones writhing to be

found in the morn like an unmade bed

whose inhabitants are reeking of debauchery.

All night the floodgates are rushed opened,

between the cotton tides that rumble

a surging current is unburdened,

coughing up a river of potency

the milk of humanity that

melts unevenly into moist shores.

‘

As the pencilled edges of land

surrenders into a bleached softness,

their instinctive horror adjusts, lowering

into the joyous wailing of grateful gods,

a ceremonial coagulation to press

into place the lingering pain that gnaws

backwards into convoluted receptacles

for carrying the ancient rituals, the grinding

of bone to bone and dust to dust

‘

whoever is writing jungle fables for this city

scribbling on in illegible loops of gelatinous rain

this vulgarity must be stopped at all cost--

we have our soft rubbery rims, the walls

of a circumstanced dam, provocative

against their flesh, tempting

but yielding

‘

to nothing