Sex and Murder Magazine

By John Grey

Your rotting body odor
stinks like my rotting body odor.
Ah my love,
we can decay together.

Without nerve ends
or blood or, especially,
not even a trickle of memory,
old hatreds, arguments, lies,
are as insignificant to us
as flies that prance across our corpses.

Unless a head
stumbles over its crumbling neck bone,
jerks sideways,
we don’t even have to look at each other.
Your denuded jaw,
the slow implosion of my face,
won’t interfere with the beauty
of our being together.

Death’s not so bad if it’s shared
is what I’m finding.
The silence doesn’t get to me.

Besides, every now and then,
a piece of me or you
snaps off with age,
taps a note or two
upon the floor beneath.

Who would have thought
our song
would be a decomposition.