The Lecher

What have I given?
Nothing replenished, nothing

Spared.
Love — my decoy, my drug.

Sex,
The drain of commitment,

A winter heat,
No sun, no sun.

Out from cracked faults I crawl
Up through dark earth,

Past coffins
And decompositions in progress

My food, my food.
What can you give

To this heart, a piled-on
Sediment,

The shell of prehistory,
Spineless, dumb-link?

What else could satisfy
Or not be forgotten

In this stick and mud?
A shriek from the flood

Clings
To the impenetrable bark

Of the grounded Ark.
There is

No heart.
It is chewed-out.

A wild mutt
Turned against its master

Gnaws off
Its own knobs and wires.

This is how it happens
Eventually —

No wants, no satisfactions.
Just easy gold,

And the face that is
Not a face,

Stones on top of stones,
Kisses clotted in the holes, dirty and cold.