The Etiquette of Vice (Poetry)

A tally etched on the wall of life for the days Adam felt beaten, dead or inappropriately elated to mark the transition of a man into a writer.

Largely autobiographical.

 

 

 

 

Clitoris Trumpeter

 

 

1

She used to straddle me

Scarlet fingernails scraping against the pelt of my chest

Her seductive half smile

And raven hair hanging like limp snakes of a voluptuous medusa

Entering her was easy

Similar to slipping a cold foot into a warm wet sock

 

2

She’d laugh

I’d moan

And pull at her clitoris

It would stretch and snap back

Elongated rubber bandish

 

3

Her smiles and laughter would melt into expressions of ecstasy

I’d pull her clitoris from between our bare thighs

And stretch it over my abdomen until it reached my mouth

I’d clamp my lips around it and play

 

4

At those times

In that abandoned house

Upon that damp mattress and soiled sheets

I was the clitoris trumpeter

And she

She was being blown.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zoo

 

 

1

Exotic animals at London Zoo

All sad eyed and shivering

Longing for the tropic of Capricorn

Longing for the tropic of Cancer

 

2

Paw twitching dreams of being burnt by equator heat

From snow wet pelt wearing animals

I sip hot wine out of a paper bag

Watching drizzle wet monkeys with bored grim masturbations

 

3

Beasts with cancelled eyes

Staring black at the bleak sky

They don’t have a God to prey upon

So every day is hope for the end

 

4

Leaving the wrought iron gates

I mimic monkey in a one-room loft

Sweating in grimy window

As I beat off at the girl sitting in bus stop across the street

 

5

Some afternoons as the invisible sun falls away

And the night descends in a twilight blur

Of blooming streetlights and deepening shadows

I almost believe that my keeper has let the cage door swing

In a menagerie of barred men working too hard for the gain of loss

Men that know little or even more than me

 

6

Under an angel sinned moon

I shuffle back to the zoological garden scratching my stubble

Scaling the fence I tear my worn slacks stained with evenings alone with vino

Falling from above and cracking a knee I become an earthbound Icarus

From stumble to limp in the grips of gravitational forces

 

7

Grey wet monkeys

Seeing

Hearing

Speaking no evil

Badly carved gargoyle creatures too cold to move

Looking too much like my hard-arse dead grandfather

 

8

I throw in the half empty bottle of wine

 

9

They squabble over it

Screech and howl over it

Sipping

Sucking

Gulping

Taking turns in hierarchy

Displaying civilized behavior as they warm from within

Slowly becoming drunk

Evolving from fish to suddenly evolve depression

 

10

Tomorrow night I’ll shoot smack up giraffe mainline

Nodding out on a long neck

The next night anti-depressants for the elephants

Sucking pills up wrinkled trunks

The night after cocaine for the hyena pen

Really give them something to laugh about

Call me sick

Call me twisted

Call me jailhouse daddy to future taxidermy

 

 

 

 

 

Horse

 

 

1

The horse rolls in clover

But the clover of what?

A mountain

Rubbing its coarse horse brown upon God’s green throne

As grizzlies smack wet lips and steal honey and salmon and fawns

From the thighs of the world

 

2

The horse owns the mountain

Hoarse with shouting down the sun from the sky

So that it may cast it at the moon’s silver

 

3

Trapped insolent joy of beast intelligence

Savage vicious black gummed animal

Decapitating flowers

Ridden into battlefields

Surviving the sword

The spear

The axe

The Trojan

To feast with yellow incisors upon war-blood splattered shamrock

 

4

No friend in Pegasus

That slut sell-out

Trading gallop for wing

A mockingbird in pantomime

A Punch and Judy street circus performance of counterfeit

As it whores its image to Caltex

 

5

Scent the hillsides with enormous black cocks

The envy of men

And abyssal cunted Nanas Punaises Morues

(Bedbugs and Codfish)

Create rivers with a hot bladder

And foals with a loose lipped bray

 

6

Horse clip clopping down through centuries

To rest in a litter of losing racing tickets

And glue factories

And dog-feed

 

7

Crucified warrior bound by barbed wire fences in dying fields of salinity

And shot for broken leg

When rider is pampered for the same

 

8

Clydesdale dreams to a mountable Shetland

As it pulls tank carts and the Richers pump

To drain tenement sewers of 1930’s Paris

for the Ancient Guild of Cesspool Cleaners

Dragging the filth of humankind to the Seine

Weeping through Hydrogen Sulfate eyes and Ammonia noses

Under plumes of white steam

 

9

Sons and grandsons of that which clopped cobblestone

Before closed carriages with Jack the Ripper knife cleaning within

Civilizations yardstick bite the azure

Until thrashing severed clouds bleed vultures and condors

Lay your thick cheek upon roses with a last gasp

Unconquerable warrior gallop the Elysian Fields.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hunger

 

 

1

I picked her up in the city

Paid for the cab

Bought a fifth of Canadian Club on the way

And took us back to my apartment

 

2

Carried her over the threshold

Kicked off my shoes in a stumble

And laid her across the kitchen table gently but firmly

She smelled as if a man had never touched her

 

3

My fingers had been itchy to lay themselves upon her all day

She was blushing deep

I was really pushing her buttons

I took a slug from the bottle grinning down at her

 I was going to do my best work on her

Really pound the living shit out of her in heated passion

 

4

I took another slug of CC and gave her a hard stare

Laid heavy calloused hands upon her smoothness

Unbuckled my pants and unbuttoned my shirt

Threaded a blank sheet into her and hammered keys

 

5

She was the most exquisite typing machine I had ever touched.