Saturday, March 18, 2006

Love Poem No. 5 (revisited)

The previous set of words attempting to form a poem under this title were not playing together nicely. So I've dumped the whole thing and come up with a new set of words:

Love Poem No. 5
When I fed you I set you three courses:
oysters from Whitstable, a carnival
of slime singed with lemon, edged
from ashtray shells and gulped;
a testicle of truffle, shaved
into a soft scramble of eggs and cream
and served on toast - crumbs knocked
from your chin by my thumb, each morsel
followed by a froth of champagne;
figs stuffed with mole, the bitter
chocolate squeezed from the fruit
as you bit the sweet flesh. Then,
after checking the knots
holding the chair to your form,
I licked the salt from your skin
and swallowed you whole.


Now that feels a bit more like it to me. Though I've got worries about the ending. Part of me wants that ending, that little twist at the close - it's fashionable to have a nice, ironic twist at the end of your poem nowadays. It's a bit of a jump, but nevertheless ...

But another part of me wants to end the poem at "sweet flesh". No twist, no closure. Just the food and the act of feeding.

I hate these sorts of conundrums on a Saturday morning.

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