Death (Her Human Look)
by Nevada Kerr

Death is my lover
Death is my mother
Death is the mouth
That feeds me undercover

I gnaw at her breast
She grieves for rest
My gluttony her tribulation
My promise her distress

Her hunger grows as I lament
Pleasure's cupidity all but spent
On bloody libations
And drunken bereavement

Devouring the slaughtered lamb
Blessed before the dove is damned
I moan and whimper, beg and plead
Conjured by the flight of seed

Death, the widow stalks the knaves
With levity from unseen graves
Shouldering the hated child
With gratitude born from the wild
Of grain and gravel and fuming bile

Death is desire
The everlasting tattle
Heathen in her headgear
Mighty in battle

She churns and she broils
A Lord requesting praise
For rosaries and dewdrops
And recipes for maze

Death is the merchant
Beloved and precise
Coddling my plunder
Like a sculptor hacking ice

Her canon is raptorial
Heralding the dawn
A petition from the babbling sky
A prelude to the bomb

Death is my ogre
A goblin's reading lens
Dear and unbending
Weeping with my friends

Death is the pulp
And core of my heart
Melting all my memories
Traitor from the start

Death is the renegade
Lurking in a whole
Sleepless Queen of Shades
The mercenary's soul

Death is my mistress
Hounding me by day
When in hot pursuit of elder Gods
I can't get her to stay

Death is the thorny cross
That caused the fool to jump
Gagmen twitch and jitter still
But Fate can make that hump

Death is a common law
A first born healer's book
Predator and prey
She conspires with the cook
Her nightmarish features
Disguise her human look

Written by Nevada Kerr
1990.