A lo stilo Nerudesque

Drunken mermaid
woman of wave and spume
your wet hip
slung with kelp

your salt eyes
stung red with
monstrous nude want
gaze at my noise for face

your belly curved like a bow
arms sleeved with
primordial sands
torso with the consistency of blind clay

I cannot follow you
to dive
to clamp kisses
like barnacles

to your hot waters
rife with shoals
and deep echo
soundless silver parallel

your seas shell-flung
no hermit no portuguese man-o-war
no upturned spur of shipwreck
can unclasp your hand

from the bile of my loss
from my closed eyes
that only can take memory
into the peak of my pained sighs.