Anti-Poetic

These things are not worthy
of a frame:
this red plastic
now warming between
pale, unshaven thighs,
the hair, now slick
with artificial juice,
and the bottle, lying on its side
nearby, nearly empty
gelling droplets sticking
to its sides.
The low grunt,
the quiet, ragged breath.
All this is too practical,
too animal. These things
are ugly. They do not transcend.

Do not use graceful words
for this crooked, hurried gorging,
this plain devoured meal. Be harsh:
judge the long-ashed cigarette in the tray
the blue mumble of the TV.
She lies like the empty wrappers
on the coffee table, crumpled,
out of place. Her hair is knotted
and her motions are clumsy.

Do not flatter her face;
it is not angelic. Her brow is pinched
her mouth tight,
as if she is in pain
or angry, or half-awake.
The pictures in her head
have no delicate setting, no roses.
They are simple tools:
one thing enters another
a red thickness, a slap, some
sticky fluid.

Look hard at the raw
insertion, not even rhythmic,
the clenched teeth, the sweat.
Don’t soften the focus
or lower the light – notice the roughness
of her flesh, the awkward crouch, the loose
skin of her shaking thigh. Be merciless:
it is unbeautiful.

She is no rose, no Venus.
Her hand grips a simple shaft;
she moves, tenses, moves again
and then in one simple arch,
her legs scizzor, clench and fall.
It is
as simple as a stone
tossed into a pond.