Incubus
I sometimes have my doubts / That when she smiles
She smiles for me / Or for some wild entity
Who, with hidden voice and lust / Emerges in her sleep, enfolding
Innocence with thrusting flesh.
Fallen from grace, wingless he comes / Trailing through backyard garbage
In the gaping tomcat night, / Clawing at her curtained window,
Thrusting his white idiot face against the glass, / And singing his terrible song.
Trembling she invites him in. / Thrilled yet terrified she lays
Naked in the humming dark, / Prostrate on rumpled sheets,
Eyes closed tight, anticipating / The touch that opens,
The whispered breath, / The knocking clock,
The cold, dark wind.
The night has teeth that bite, / And tongues that caress the skin
And lap the dream as cats ingesting milk. / And flickering shadows remain
To cloak the cries of invaded flesh / And hallucinate the seed of ecstasy.
The moon explodes, crying, sighing, / Helpless among dark clouds.
Bound by whispers / And gripped by lunar hands
She twists and turns / In his cold embrace.
Wanting and naked / She opens and closes
In her dream / As a night flower plucked
Before its time.
His presence is all encompassing. / His embrace, like sucking quicksand,
Absorbs her beauty. / She runs in her dream
But her running is slow. / And wherever she goes
He is always there, inside her / And around her,
And the morning is too far away.
