You puff a coal-miner's nose-warming clay pipe
stuffed with the tab ends of cheap tobaccos:
chapped hands, big-knuckled, cradle its warmth.
Sulky lips — cat's tongue spits out bad words.

All along those clarty back lanes of London
you wander, seeking whatever you lost or gave away
on boulevards whose café gaslights paled
a frowning face once brown with boyhood glooms.

We share your young criminal's fervent body heat
moulding your moleskin thighs with promises
of rich rancid ejaculations in midnight's
lusting loneliness, rich-rhymed feasts of love.

Your rough-mouthed kisses in the sweating dark
of cheap hotels — sheets and towels never changed,
stiff with the stinks of disgusted bodies
till noon wakens us from sullen slumbers.