You, who would never stoke the fire of growth,
You would portend to be Cleopatra lifeless.
Yes, you--under a blaze or blush of hues
Never dress or redress.
You would never decline to recline on
Soft velvet and satin sand.
You never forsake diaphanous veil on thigh or breast,
Never the incense-tickled nostrils or lips.
Where is the anticipation in your hips?
Flicking buffed nails and curving egyptian arm
She ordered wet skin to be brought in
She ordered honey from cactus
She ordered strawberry from sand
She ordered wet mottled riverskin to be brought in
She, desert amazon
She burnt spices to sleep me
She sang dances to happy me
She pressed fruit to drunk me.
Would you reach for a goblet, be it wine or venom?
Would you extend slender arm, polished goddess limb?
You grope with finger and dimples.
No rubystained mouth stretches to smile
``Bring in the Anaconda.''
Once I slid in with her
And saw the rich earth
Where glassy grass grew
In a clear meadow
Where grave cows pastured
With the frisky asses
Whose milk we bathed in.
Once I slid in with her
And my skin sparked
When her legs clamped around my ribs
In the churning milk
I wanted to coil around her from thigh to heel
But she pressed me rigid between tight legs
Over and under and between your legs
I am lazily draped--danger and diversion
Your true needs, titillated by snakeskin on nipple.
I am no Asp to draw vital blood--I keep you
Cool and moist in saharan strokes,
Lulled by your tent's ambience.
Without spirit in the air, you would be playing
With acid blind.
You are wise, you are fortunate
It is a drowsy Anaconda you caress.
He is rippling moistness and dry weight
He is scaly wisdom and coiled fertility
He is fat muscle and slithering guilt
He is abandoned lord and lithe slave
He is forsaken lust and proud beam
He is snuffed attention and leaky adoration.
A sand snake you wanted, not the spectrum stripes of grass and river,
A bland snake you wanted, flesh covered from thorn and sliver,
You brave the atomized earth.
I left my water for your dusty slopes, your dusky curves,
While nubile maidens, scantily clad touch and observe.
Snakeoil, secretions, tenderly massaged
Into your calf, shoulder, your loin,
You traded ass's milk tor sidewinder suppleness.
Dusty palms encircled me
Many brown dry fingers and choking thumbs
A dozen hands ginger and heavy
I was scratched on cracks and fissures
In the rock my home my bed
My wet rock my babies
I was torn and watery blood
Streaked my belly
Dusty palms stung my cuts
And sandaled feet killed my children
My wounds never healed
And their mouths eat sand and thorn
My wounds never healed
No milky bath could salve them
No wet-tongued kiss could seal them
My wounds my rock my children
Those fingers were dry cockroaches
That squeezed with ahiry leg clutches
That scuttled and shuffled
Waterproof cockroaches carried me
To gobiland to gold to glee.
Sleep comes after you, purring gentle lava.
Your maidens leave for the moment to minsiter to their men.
Your Anaconda has no den to attend to, is cold in the night,
Raises his gaze to the clock in the sky,
Eunuch regarding an approaching sail.
Clockhands spring silently off the disc.
The hour-hand thickens, tapers, grows sturdy and firm,
The minute distends, curves and sharpens.
Your Anaconda is plucked off the sand
Beheaded and impaled to the smiling face
By the sabre and stake of your indifferent race.
