Poetry is that purple-throated girl
     out of whom we pull forth words like pearls from
     oysters, always ready to be formed, turned
     in our palms until each tongue’s silver thrust
     perverts itself into verse she herself

     yearns to recite first, measuring in hurts
     what distant love echoes at that lost shore
     where she found in one breath just how close we
     were to devouring her, hands slippery
     with a scent foreign to performance on

     an altar so visceral, lips choking
     forward sounds so unequivocal she
     must think herself blind to behold her own
     shell from within and without at the same
     time, her very shout every bit what

     we hope to sip and savour, putting wet
     kisses on paper as we split open
     her thighs and lick her, enquiring inside
     to learn what unsaid secrets so discreet
     a creator laid there, inspiring these

     fits no better suited for a career
     than in this operation’s cruelest
     theatre, poets and pornographers
     lying with her to get an audience
     to buy their cures, denying love because

     an opened heart so readily succumbs
     to being consumed, and being eaten
     is not what we lonely hunters shoot for,
     our arms thrown down only when we approach
     her, parting her tabernacle’s curtains.