On each arm a blue snake wrist to shoulder,
jaws apart, the long flicker of tongues
forked to each nipple, one lettered mild,
the other bitter. She’s my snake lady,
the anaconda circling her waist, the cobra
rippling her belly, her neck a rattler,
each thigh a garter snake, her crotch a pit,
a snakey river many men have failed and fallen in.
On one rear cheek the anchor of the wandering sailor,
the other wears the lucky horseshoe of the landsman.
Above a skull a scroll spells out forever love
below a name scratched out she can’t recall now.
You won’t remember me. I’m the one that tupped
in the wall in the brass bed in the next room
of your father’s dream the night he sired you.
Not that your mother knew. No wonder you’re stunted.
In my time I’ve fucked under flags of all nations
and all for the love of it, banging the bedsprings
from Cairo to Cardiff. I’m the same good whore
in every man’s port, in a window in Amsterdam
where I sit behind glass in my credit card fur,
in my black suspenders and tigerskin chair.
And I show them my tongue. I show them my eyes
and my lilypad skin. And I purr.
My name’s Tom Peeper, I live in Gropecunte Lane
among the other animals. Under this woolly cap
I’m entirely made up of the private parts of lovers
busy at each others’ bodies in the ferns.
I’m a mixed bag of tits mouths cocks cunts
and little boy bums, I’m a sandwich of meat in meat
and I dream every night of the gold skins of women
naked among leaves with nipples like diamonds.
As for you. You never see me under the briars
in my charity shop cast-off hush puppy shoes.
You’re too busy. You come with a bird’s fierce cry
in woods where the lovers are both one beast now.