You muddied my welcome mat
many times, never knocking.
Now I know you were
listening to my music.
This may be the real reason
for my love of music: to draw
the swampmaids to me,
and me to them. Others
dream of purpose, let us
dream of new purposes,
for ourselves and others.
It's easier when they open your gills,
a queasy pleasure: it happens
on the inside first,
often with a probing finger,
gentle from the river and swamp slime
that the swampmaids wind.
And they build swamp architecture
in lake-lit depths
the heights of which
their sisters only glimpse
in the reaches
of their lonely oceans: the mermaid's
teeth are even sharper,
they are less likely
to keep a male companion.
Of the swampmen, most
were converted. Even in
the ocean, the male of the species
is exceptionally rare, attended
by terrifying myths
and stories of his diminution,
related to the instability
of his terrible power.
Perhaps this is the swampmaid's hour.
And we who fell to gain our gills
will provide the new record collections.
Swamp-fed fingers find erections.
They also serve who only wait and fuck.
