Song of King Krypto

(written for Crim's "Addiction" competition)


Little red-headed demon Irish boy.  
Run your hands through his beard.  
4 a.m. and you're high off King Krypto
and Bath Salts. He's got fingers
hooked like a cage in your vagina
and anus and you can't breathe
from the stark harsh beauty of it,
it's like the night and insects
are going to swallow you in,
cement you into that black-thick,
sweet abyss. Yeah, love it
baby, he'll be gone by Tuesday
but this is it, this madness is what
you've craved and you're swirling in it,
rock and roll, rock-hard head to toe,
baby got back, baby's heart is throbbing
bass-ackwards in love. Fuck me. Fuck me.

He wants sex toys and you'll buy
a small fortune for him
at a sleazy porn shop outside city limits,
plastic curtains waving in the door frame
like a snuff film, the clerk an ex-drag queen
who recognizes your disease, builds
your confidence up for the moment you'll leave
Irish boy's house, the salt-at-your-lips aftertaste
of his sperm to keep you company on the drive home.

Go to the hospital two days later with his semen
still leaking from your every pore. You charm
the doc into getting only two days. Don't bathe
and the smell of you is sickening. They don't
do anything this time, don't even change
your meds, just let you sleep it off.

Oh, baby. When they play that song, you know,
the one where he screams he's so numb,
does that raw harmony like he's Bach in leather,
that pissed-off crescendo, fuck, it's so sweet,
it reminds me of you.

Always, that sweet fucking street-licked
pissed-off crescendo.  Angst and anger fortissimo.  
Throaty, visceral, on-my-knees-your-cum-in-my-mouth,
hurt-like-death-awareness, death-and-roses boyhood.

Always of you.