Tug Dumbly # 47 - She Beats me and I Bay for More

She Beats Me and I Bay For More

for Mistress Alcohol

She beats me and I bay for more

And beg no shriving of her sins,

A bruising doesn’t cancel love

And blood out-thicks the splintered limb.    

No charge be laid against her, save

Her honour’s sharp, it stakes my breath  

To gates of bedlam, jail and grave,       

Yes, I’ll defend her to the death.

She beats me and I bay for more,

My kindly cruel undaunted dove,      

The pinchers say ‘renounce the whore’,                                         

But their’s an inching maggot love.  

No oyster knife could prise apart     

We cloistered in our self-cell barred,

No chicken heart ticks at our breast,    

We tear regrets to bloody shards

And flaunt this badger’s coal black eye,

This fist of hair, this fig-split lip,

These patches fester lesser prides

Whose vows are baby junket spit.

They call it hard but they can’t see

The bruising in our private place

Lie lullabied in lambency

Of powdered limbs in snaked embrace.

She’s poison paired with antidote,

Outbalancing this drought, this flood,

She drowns me as he irrigates,

Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood.

So let us kiss and cancel time,

The time that’s been, the time to come,

The wine that wounded whiles away

The broken yolk of yestersun.

No, I’ll not bolt our bargain’s door,

My treachoured heart would quail and break,

She beats me and I bay for more,

She gives me no more than she takes.