To you, I taste like sin; tobacco and alcohol
mingling hot-foul and exotic. I get you drunk
against your better judgement, and as I lead you
out, you sway, say no, giddy with the inevitable.

You like beaches? I’ve made love by the Med,
the Channel, the North Atlantic. Then you
follow me onto the abandoned shale, the daylight
biting your retina. It is too cold

to undress, and when I swallow your cock
(my mouth so hot it makes you dizzy) you
thrust your numb fingers into my coat
to find my breasts. So you’re a poet

I whisper, sensing your balls tighten
under my gloves. Please, you reply.
Mute, I push your head down;
you are thirsty; I know you can taste

this morning’s bath, but traces too
of another man’s semen, of blood,
the dampness of seaweed.
The tide is pushing itself towards us;

a man walking his dog unzips
his anorak. I straddle you, we sit
rocking in the breeze, dialect thick on your
lips, saliva stringing between us. Please,

please. I smile and your eyes roll back
with the receding grasp of breakers.
You’re no longer making any sense
to me; something like Old Norse retches

in your throat as the hot rush releases you.
Afterwards you mutter faintly, half-metre,
near rhyme, kissing my neck as your poems
seep away into the shingle.