This is the fifth warning
I won't speak to you again
I don't want to look through your kitchen
into your bedroom to see your wife
wiping her snotty nose and sleephungry redeyes
with a dishrag
her underwear crucified on a hooked peg
above your sagging three-legged bed
she has occupied alone all night
under a rateaten rag of a blanket praying for relief
into a hunger-stained mattress that's not ashamed
to preach its sackcloth secrets to any
passerby
this is the fifth and last warning.


Don't let me hear again
your sex-on-the-side-sated voice
like a lorry unloading junk when you come in
at the milkman's time
to a hot breakfast she never tires
of getting ready
for your thankless
pig's throat
this is the fifth and final warning
I won't speak to you again


but perhaps it's too late already
the milkman doesn't only deliver milk, you know.