Clinical

I'd just popped in to the butchers
to get two chicken breasts,
(while the doctor took a butchers
at those fatty lumps in your breast)
and came out with a ham shank
and two pounds of sausage meat.

Back in the waiting room I shrank
into the worn black leatherette seat
and squeaked a whiny fart as I crossed
and uncrossed my legs. If only I'd brought a
book... An arthritic old woman crossed
herself religiously and kissed her bony hand
as a younger woman (evidently her daughter)
animated some local atrocity with her hands.
Invisibly male, I sat with my neatly wrapped
wad of meat nuzzled in my lap.

                                   Its soft weight upon my loins
got me thinking about the pot-bellied
man behind the meat counter
and how he displayed such tenderness that belied
his daily encounter
with the bloody corpses, lights and loins
of cattle, sheep and pigs;
how gently he separated the fat from the lean
and that got me thinking what bloody pigs
we are!
           I mean,
that first day we met I just couldn't wait
to separate you from your slip
and take a gander at your wholesome breast.
And when you looked at me and told me to wait
a while, saying that you just didn't want to,
I gave you that spiel about being Don Juan too.

Only many years later did you let slip
how my lovemaking then seemed so 'cynical'.
I asked if that's the word you really meant
and wouldn't let it rest
until you said, "not so much that as, well, so clinical."

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