Monsters of Love

Marrakesh, in an attic hotel room
The woman they call 'The Hostess'
Smokes cigarettes for her nervousness
Takes off and folds up her dress

And diagonal sun across darkness
Churning through dust to her leg
Bisects between shutter and ceiling
Silk of a fresh spider's web

From the siesta of Reason
Come monsters of love
The stillborn issue, the bulb-eyed fool
Sterile and slow as the stubborn mule
What mutations thresh in a kiss
What perversities flourish in this
Monster of love?
- Guest below
Black widow above

And the hostess is naked
As she waits for his key in the door
And her body is old as the hills
And as young as forty-four
From the street comes the rasp of an engine
And the whiff of exhaust on the air
Brief Arabic conversation
Then the step of the Guest on the stair

From the siesta of Reason come monsters of love
Spawn of tadpole in polythene
Liberator of the hijack gene
She will replenish the teeming earth
And then guzzle the afterbirth
This monster of love
Guest below
Black widow above

And the Guest has abandoned himself
To a joy so intense he could die
And sucking her silk between shutter and ceiling
The spider releases her fly

From the siesta of Reason come monsters of love
The horse-lizard, the lamb-badger
The thrush-lemur, the wildcat-gazelle
The crow-monkey, the bat-jaguar
The dog-dromedary, the slug-whale

Monsters of love
Guest below
Black widow