I always thought of you
(always always always always)
as a snake
(never never never never from my thoughts)
But no longer
(absence fonder absence fonder absence fonder)
You have changed
You have turned
Diminished by our plight
Sloughed your coat off for another
Now nakedly revealed
As a slug
A slug has just one aim
The rape and disappearance
Of all things succulent
Drunk on wild-herb flavours
In each mouthful of green mush
Its mandible saliva
Indiscriminately pillaging
The juices
Engorged not enraged
Your quick and pointed kill
In the rustling of the leaves
Has crumbled into this
You have crumbled into this
The multi-plated hunter
Foreshortened into slime
Once hissing single muscle
Now a toothless bag of gums
And maybe when you siphon through
My poison granule outline
The venom does its job
And you expire within my vacuum
As sucked and desiccated
As
My
Soul
Of course I was immediately attracted to this one - what is a slug but a snail that has lost its shell? In fact in some slugs it is possible to see the remnants of the shell preserved within the gill... but I digress - back to the poem...which is a powerful metaphor - and startling too. I enjoyed this.
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