poetry
 
DROWNING MAN
 
Untrained muscles, tiring, fail
on my last night's crawl for the unbeaconed buoy.
I snatch at the sea,
and she snatches me.
Goose-skinned, testicles shrugged, I succumb - disappear,
descending. Numb.
Coward, cartoon balloons abort my head
in mercury burps; reason freezes
and fries - a burbling jam of memory. I die -
the longest, thick, sickly twisting dive and sigh.

Picked clean for the occasion, skull to shin,
at each station groomed by tickling slick schools -
requiem teaching the grin, moray polishing -
encouraged by tentacle pats, I'm
committed, lead as suicide - settling
in bone-lined beds of black horrific,
where needled pressured demons shimmy and writhe
and wear dim lamps as tails and ties.