How To Put Up A Boundary

Rats run across blood-splattered gangrene,
geranium petals over detrital browns.
They have burrowed from the house
and cored into the compost,
their preference dog hair,
potato peelings,
crushed eggshells.
I pay a price for doing it correctly:
shredded utility bills, mallow prunings
in alternate layers with greens: grass clippings, banana skins, slipping
on other rotten morsels, moulding cotton buds,
their choice atop the lot
a glutinous leftover
Chinese.
This skittering breeds a forlorn record
like felonious bacteria murderous
within a negroid angel cake,
drawn through dry then wet.
Yet the king rat knew no rules of decay.
Left anyway for another home: meals
we ate together
nought
as if
eventually
we all ought mourn
at the spent heart of things.
The clitoris is a hard, clean picked chicken bone
which should not have been thrown
on the heap. Falling back
to basics, irreducible
by dawn's hungry
seduction.
It will take more than forgotten prayers
and a leap of faith to fend
off its gnawing.
Wire mesh.
Cement.
Whatever can be put
in place, replaceable by morning.