'A Scatological Love Poem' in Tiffinbox Review--- and a confession!

 

The Banshee spends so much of her time mourning and grieving, you see, so she's apt to forget certain other things. So 'A Scatological Love Poem' was very kindly published by Yashasvi Vachhani in Tiffinbox Review. Which the Banshee also read out after a Queer Pride March years ago to roaring applause. But... but... the mistake the Banshee made is that she realised much later that 9 years earlier, in 2016, this poem-- albeit in a different form as several edits and changes were made with Yashasvi-- was earlier published in this print journal SCRIPTS of the LGBTQ society Labia. And then crying crying whining wailing, the Banshee forgot all about it by 2025. So the Banshee's apologies are due as like this the Banshee is going to acquire a bad reputation and nobody is ever going to publish her again. This poem was not included in my poetry collection because the publishers flatly refused to publish a poem which has Scatological in its very title. The funny thing is that even 'Beds and Buttons' is a scatological poem, but just because it doesn't directly use the word in the title, it passed under their radar. Read the Weird. Weirder. Weirdest. issue here

 A Scatological Love Poem

To lick salty sweat off your skin
to kiss your hot fevered body
to touch your menstrual blood. 
To smell it. Hair too. Pubic hair too.
To caress your wounds and itches.
To clean vomit. To clean shit. And then again, to love every part of you. 
To suck blood like a vampire or a suction pump.
Is that violent? I did not mean violence.
Is this poem violent? Is it blasphemous?
Is it grotesque? Does it talk about gross parts
of you, of me? But already,
it is becoming inseparable, you see.
You may feel repulsed by this poem. You may
want to eject it. Vomit it out. My animal hunger.
Like morning phlegm spat out with toothpaste,
(you wrote somewhere). Spat, that’s the end of that.
But all this is only fantasy. And I could make the climax
a little more gruesome, a little more profane.
It’s just a different way of me being inside you.
I could perhaps be inside you as food. Yes, you could kill me,
and eat me, if you prefer. 
	
and if I am to your distaste, if you abhor
my diseased & wicked brain, you 
could excrete me. Cut me, carve me
gash me, slash me. Devastate until
satiated. Expel me, eliminate me, evacuate me. 
In skin vein and limb, dream and whim your illicit name
the obsessive compulsive desire of my tongue
Oh, to inhabit you as food, for an hour only.