I watch you working
the body with a boxer’s predatory
rhythm, ravaging
that tin box like werewolf
a fairytale maid, incensed,
swinging your fist in sideways
as if with ice pick into gangster gut –

And here headbutt!
O skull cracking reverberation, echoes
bouncing in and out
of stalls and toilet bowls home
of piss-soaked cigarette butts
and discarded clingfilm wraps
of cocaine –

Out they come!

In all their wrinkled rainbow glory!

Biblical flood
of shimmering plastic wrappers!

I hear the collective moan
of a thousand sea turtles shuddering
in their coral, bleached
white as ghost of shipwreck sailor bone,
eroded and puckholed
as the teeth of children
neglected and tossed into care, children,
some of whom grow
up twisted as weeds pushing
out of concrete cracks
into men like you
in bar bathrooms, devastating
condom machines with the energy
of a dozen angels.