Dentures (The Return)

A re-post of an old one from last year. This poem is on my mind at the moment because I may be reading it at a spoken word event this week…

 

Dentures

The dentures are surprisingly realistic.
He had been sceptical at first.
How could something manufactured
and synthetically glued to his jaws
recreate the natural, pure, organic joy
of that first puncture of a virgin neck?
But…

The bite is pleasingly precise.
Especially after a tiny bit of his own
cunning custom-sharpening.
(They don’t do that on the NHS.)

He finds himself bearing down with
renewed finesse, as in his insatiable youth
a few centuries past. In more recent times
he’d began to fret, fearing his performance
and enjoyment would be marred and curtailed
by failing loose fillings and gum disease’s
inevitable receding creep. Indeed,
it had impeded his pleasure considerably.
He had dreaded losing an incisor
in a used up young lady.

But now, his crafted smile sets him free.
Once again he is the thirstiest seducer
he has ever been. She is flesh: prime,
pristine and ripe for bleeding.
Feisty little barstool-percher:
Daddy’s Princess by day,
prey to lust by night.
And to him. She bucks a faint flutter
of flight against his tightening grip.

Hunger stabbing earlier and finally dark,
he’d stalked closing time’s reckless hour
of the feckless fuckless. Slurrers of hope,
over experience. He saw her. (Albeit fuzzily:
must remember to get that free sight test.)
Her eyes were bloodshot and fever-hazed.
Now, feeling the fire bump in her wrists
and ooze hot from her new-cut vein,
he knows… She saw it in him, with
the certainty of twelve vodkas:

she saw he was not “past it”.
(Thank you! Thank you! I love you!)
Some things are “false”, yes my sweet,
but no need for Viagra here.

He widens his lips over her split skin,
tearing it further, digging in deep.
A “kiss” is too demure for this.
He sucks and groans and drinks:
she is strong – like addiction’s kick.
Blood sluicing with lingering Steradent:
mint-rusty tingle and adhesive aftertaste
to the greedy gorge of his tongue.

Until he is done. Sated.
She is quiet. Still.
Emptied…

Later, he watches them,
stowed safe in their jar,
floating in reddening mist
and chemicals before dawn.
They smile.
He is weary now, tired – like they say
of graves. These days he needs his rest.
And sometimes a mug of Horlicks.