her violence

she defined what violence was
for me, its daily deification

a decay of reason
into learned atrophy,

the instinct that renewed
us and enveloped love

in that taut membrane
of tawny light, night

developed under her fists
its bliss when devils chose

to die there, lonely as
octopodes or poems

no one has yet written
hidden behind their inky

injection into this needy
sea, our dream that

bleeds colour therefore.
God’s most assiduous whore

is this snoring morning,
the whore for whom we mourn

we are, as yet unborn

 

David McLean
David McLean was born in Wales and has lived in Sweden since 1987. This month, he is “poet in residence” at www.poetsletter.com and in August 2008 will be “centre stage poet” in Decanto. You can visit him at his myspace page, www.myspace.com/david_mclean.