Monsters of Love - Momus

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