Gambling I'd grown orgastically delicious,
not knowing you preferred the canned to the fresh.

The blight of rejection gnawed my once-supple skin
and I oozed the pus of desire's disuse.

Stem weak, I branch-offed,
and grounded, I pulpified, leaving
my pit elementally exposed.

>>the glutton

While the flesh fried in a skillet
seasoned with regret
the butcher tried to forget
fresh sins of the kill.

A reel of bloody film
oozed in his mind
playing the steel hacksaw
dismembering limbs from trunks
chopping meat
into hunks
finding space in a fridge
filled to save from a rancid grave
the meat he'd eat to honor
victims of the slaughter.

To cauterize the gush of film
he'd have a glass of scotch.

Watching the dinner sear
somehow calmed the butcher's fear
of dying loveless and alone
because he loved
the lives he'd take
to make the steaks
that he would eat
to feed his ache
his need to be part of their herd;
he'd gird the herd to him--
they'd be his energy--

the synergy of man and love
was what the butcher really cooked
in the pan with his oven.

And it appeared to be
a normal dinner
when he took
plate to table
and as he ate
he joined the souls
of filleter and fillet.

But at this feast
the beast served
himself a plate of man:
the real animal
at the table
was a cannibal
eating his lovers, as in death, they had him.

His jaw chewed intense in tense masturbation--
a grinding lonely occupation
that releases orgastic flavor
that the body ceases to savor
when the swallowing is through.

He wished he could possess the feeling
of flesh filling the fallow womb of his
hungry hollow mouth forever
so he swallowed his lover's meat
into the locker of his belly
where he thought he could freeze
and keep
the carnage of carnal knowledge.
His obsession with possession
by eating the ephemeral corpses of corporeal joy
was what made the gormandizer kill
in an attempt to fill his empty ulcered soul.

But when he swallowed it left
his mouth bererft of any aftertaste of love
and the life wasted for his feeding
was forgotten by the glutton
as he began to plan for his next meal.