Your red hair
and horse-breath might be
the orang's at the zoo
masturbating for the crowd
the crude fraud
leering, stop you are so fair.

Liar, liar.
I did as I was told to.
From the place of confinement
I moved all night
through sleep as through a death march
on the rigid crutch of your love.

Punished of
wishes and history
I groaned all night.
The road was blasted, black
the horizon bankrupt.
I woke to obligations.

I woke to executions,
butter and eggs and March crocus
for a precise table service
the discipline and bondage
a credit to the sex manuals
hidden under the bed,

a prelude
to the nipple clamps and manacles
the bulbish dildoes
that critical mass of your mind
concealed in the hollow of a drawer
behind six years' Xmas sweaters --

your orders pouring like prayers
out of the dark
and at the breakaway point
the forced confession -- yes, oh yes --
with which I grievously bless
and fuse you.