Her legs would come out of darkness,
sinuous limbs spreading wide in welcome
to claim my pelvis in a lust-lock,
her arms wrapping around my head,
body draped over me like a shroud,
like the night itself, engulfing me—
this, for many men, is the end—
cunt gaping to swallow my cock whole,
dripping like some cinematic fiend,
like a mollusk she’d lay a slick trail
ending in the creamy pool of her vagina
where she degrades my pleading flesh—
letting myself slide into her deep well,
euphoric enclosure and origin of life,
to become intangible from pleasure,
heavenly muscles devouring sanity
with each convulsive wring—
for many men, this is the end—
before releasing myself, first in spasms,
then in vapors, to be entwined with earth,
to descend with her as she goes down,
giving myself over to eternity,
to be with her, an element of earth.
Men wait for her in their sleep,
reaching out with empty hands
and erections as dishonest as words,
or lie sleepless hoping she will come,
begging the insensitive walls for her,
praying to plastic idols of death
for her to find them so she can defile
the host of their whimpering souls,
crying for her to squeeze them dry…
great animal of legend and fable,
she-beast of torment and desire,
temptress of fathers and saints,
holy daughter from earth’s beginning,
sacred night light pulling us down
as you tug on our eager cocks,
down to the base of existence,
down to the lowest levels of ourselves—
O divine, mythological slut,
we undress for your arrival.
I have never seen one.
To call out a magical creature
like a unicorn, sphinx or slut,
I think you must sit very still
until covered with moss and lichens,
have worm tunnels grazing your butt
and trees sprouting from your crotch .
And like someone beaten every day,
who has learned to ask for nothing,
you must be totally pure of heart.
They neither come to placid men
nor those expecting miracles.
My hunger for her savage power
is too obvious, she smells me
in the distance and turns away,
herself searching for something we
will never know or even imagine.
I can wait, but not a lifetime.
I grow restless and lose faith.
Instead of some fabulous beast
of sinful anguish and satiation,
I find, at best, a mortal woman
willing to be my friend and lover.
We hold hands and make plans,
we kiss and talk, fuck and eat—
the usual things people do—
and look for ways to make life
something more than a waiting game
between the vacancies of birth and death.
But this is ordinary. We hand off
this and other burdens to our children,
we make them search the night
when we’ve grown too tired to care,
we gift wrap our emptiness
to make it seem like something new.
Some day they’ll learn the trick
and pass it off to their own babies
like a malignant genetic flaw
hidden just out of thought, lingering
like nothing but a vague discomfort.
When I die there will be nothing
fantastic clinging to my waist
or draining me of precious fluids,
limbs implacable and crab-like,
because I have failed to find her.
No mythic beast will have me.
She will not come to defile me,
nor will I have been infected
by her insatiable sensual awareness
so completely of this earth
that in degradation I would dissolve
into the rivers, lakes and oceans
where I would sink to the bottom
while held in her gracious arms,
to finally penetrate the bed rock
where I would stay until earth is gone—
then we would be released, together,
both nothing more than frigid dust
obliterated and frozen in space,
where we would end as a planet ends.
Instead, I’ll leave a vague discomfort
in those I’ve touched, confusing them
before I drift out of the grip of earth,
separating from life before I’ve died.