Siren (Jan. 19, 2005)

The Liber Monstrorum warns that
the sirens distract ships with their song,
"and they are most like human beings
from the head to the navel, with the body
of a maiden, but have scaly fish's tails,
with which they lurk in the sea."

-- Clara Strijbsoch, The Seafaring Saint:
Sources and Analogues of the 12th
Century "Voyage of St. Brendan"


Halving goddess, you are
my dream's reflection and
depth, the blue-boned nacre
of devil sweetness
inside all song. All my
errors I commend to you,
my pure white sails
furled by the God
stilled and limp
before your risings
oh so dripping with
unknowns. What course
is not foiled by the swell
of breasts inside the
wave which breaks
and pounds on that
shore over there,
the one not found
on any map, in
regions beyond
all Christian pour?
Gold cargo and
more golden ports
are both forgotten
in the pearled silver
of your voice,
your words not
spoken in any day
I've live, nor
read in any
text above the wave.
They gleam and
shimmer like gems
set in scales
which flash and
then are gone. Listen
to that singing at
your dry peril
O masthead scout:
doze there and
it's hair nose &
eyeballs in one
long scream into
the soak & the silent
aria of drifting down
the miles to the bed
that gathers lovers
in a mile-wide embrace,
matressed by a
loam of bones.
Is that the measure
of your wild beyond,
a waist of song
between one kiss
and all abyss? Or
is such praise too
unsalted for your tongue
for which music
is blue labia, the
slick quench of
sucking cunt harrowing
my ears into wilder
dreadful rooms below?
What is that sound aft
of this daily jaunt
across the verbal blue,
a sound which can't
be bedded here but
only flung in mist?
A swell of milky nipples,
the smile which melts
down to alloyed hell?
Who knows; the song
has sounded where I
swore it belled,
silent as an
otherworldly buoy.
Thank God (I think)
I sail on. But now
what surf do I hear
crashing ahead? And
that voice -- almost a girl's --