Floating
by Michael R. Burch

Memories flood the sand’s unfolding scroll;
they pour in with the long, cursive tides of night.

Memories of revenant blue eyes and wild lips
moist and frantic against my own.

Memories of ghostly white limbs ...
of soft sighs
heard once again in the surf’s strangled moans.

We meet in the scarred, fissured caves of old dreams,
green waves of algae billowing about you,
becoming your hair.

Suspended there,
where pale sunset discolors the sea,
I see all that you are
and all that you have become to me.

Your love is a sea,
and I am its trawler—
harbored in dreams,
I ride out night’s storms;
unanchored, I drift through the hours before morning,
dreaming the solace of your warm *******,
pondering your riddles, savoring the feel
of the explosions of your hot, saline breath.

And I rise sometimes
from the tropical darkness
to gaze once again out over the sea . . .
You watch in the moonlight
that brushes the water;

bright waves throw back your reflection at me.

This is a poem I wrote as a teenager. It has been published by Penny Dreadful, Romantics Quarterly, Boston Poetry Magazine, The Chained Muse and Poetry Life & Times.



These are poems about mermaids, Lorelei, sirens, water nymphs, octopuses, manatees, and other mysterious creatures that inhabit the depths of seas, lakes and rivers…

Siren Song
by Michael R. Burch

The Lorelei’s
soft cries
entreat mariners to save her ...

How can they resist
her seductive voice through the mist?

Soon she will savor
the flavor
of sweet human flesh.



Lures of the Lorelei
by Michael R. Burch

These are the rocks where the Lorelei combs
her wind-tangled hair as the dark water moans,
and her uncanny hymns echo softly between
worlds fashioned of stone and her strange algaed dreams …

Here men hear her songs, as they always have done,
as they dream to be one with the pale weightless foam …
as they also now long for her sleek, slender arms—
sweet relief from their dull lives, wives, shanties and farms!

But what does she offer them—is it love?
As she croons her desire, is she moray, minx, dove?
Or merely a mystery: an enigma, like death,
to men bent on drowning, unhappy with breath?



The Abyss
by Michael R. Burch

Love, the abyss
where pale Lorelei dwell,
swells with bright music —
the music of hell.

For the sirens there lure
countless men to their doom,
crying, “Give us a child!”
in the luminous gloom.

And who can resist
their cries — wild & untamed —
or the flash of a breast,
its pink ****** inflamed?

So the young men all leap
in their lemming-like urge
to thresh their soft shells
where the dark waters surge.

Now many lie shattered
on the sharp, hidden rocks
where they succor the spawn
of some wily sea-fox.



Adrift
by Michael R. Burch

I helplessly loved you
although I was lost
in the veils of your eyes,
grown blind to the cost
of my ignorant folly
—your unreadable rune—
as leashed tides obey
an indecipherable moon.



Medusa
by Michael R. Burch

Friends, beware
of her iniquitous hair—
long, ravenblack & melancholy.

Many suitors drowned there—
lost, unaware
of the length & extent of their folly.



Sinking
by Michael R. Burch

for Virginia Woolf

Weigh me down with stones …
fill all the pockets of my gown …
I’m going down,
mad as the world
that can’t recover,
to where even mermaids drown.



The Drawer of Mermaids
by Michael R. Burch

This poem is dedicated to Alina Karimova, who was born with severely deformed legs and five fingers missing. Alina loves to draw mermaids and believes her fingers will eventually grow out.

Although I am only four years old,
they say that I have an old soul.
I must have been born long, long ago,
here, where the eerie mountains glow
at night, in the Urals.

A madman named Geiger has cursed these slopes;
now, shut in at night, the emphatic ticking
fills us with dread.
(Still, my momma hopes
that I will soon walk with my new legs.)

It’s not so much legs as the fingers I miss,
drawing the mermaids under the ledges.
(Observing, Papa will kiss me
in all his distracted joy;
but why does he cry?)

And there is a boy
who whispers my name.
Then I am not lame;
for I leap, and I follow.
(G’amma brings a wiseman who says

our infirmities are ours, not God’s,
that someday a beautiful Child
will return from the stars,
and then my new fingers will grow
if only I trust Him; and so

I am preparing to meet Him, to go,
should He care to receive me.)



Excerpt from “The Song of the Spirits over the Waters”
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Wind is water's
amorous pursuer:
the Wind, upswept,
heaves waves from their depths.
And you, mortal soul,
how you resemble water!
And a mortal’s Fate,
how alike the wind!



The Fisher
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The river swirled and rippled;
nearby an angler lay,
and watched his lure with a careless eye,
like any other day.
But as he watched in a strange half-dream,
he saw the waters part,
and from the river’s depths emerged
a maiden, or a ****.

A Lorelei, she sang to him
her strange, bewitching song:
“Which of my sisters would you snare,
with your human hands, so strong?
To make us die in scorching air,
ripped from our land, so clear!
Why not leave your arid land
And rest forever here?”

“The sun and lady-moon, they lave
their tresses in the main,
and find such cleansing in each wave,
they return twice bright again.
These deep-blue waters, fresh and clear,
O, feel their strong allure!
Wouldn’t you rather sink and drown
into our land, so pure?”

The water swirled and bubbled up;
it lapped his naked feet;
he imagined that he felt the touch
of the siren’s kisses sweet.
She sang to him of mysteries
in her soft, resistless strain,
till he sank into the water
and never was seen again.



Ophélie (“Ophelia”), an Excerpt
by Arthur Rimbaud
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

On pitiless black waves unsinking stars abide
... while pale Ophelia, a lethargic lily, drifts by ...
Here, tangled in her veils, she floats on the tide ...
Far-off, in the woods, we hear the strident bugle’s cry.

For a thousand years, or more, sad Ophelia,
This albescent phantom, has rocked here, to and fro.
For a thousand years, or more, in her gentle folly,
Ophelia has rocked here when the night breezes blow.

For a thousand years, or more, sad Ophelia,
Has passed, an albescent phantom, down this long black river.
For a thousand years, or more, in her sweet madness
Ophelia has made this river shiver.



Circe
by Michael R. Burch

She spoke
and her words
were like a ringing echo dying
or like smoke
rising and drifting
while the earth below is spinning.

She awoke
with a cry
from a dream that had no ending,
without hope
or strength to rise,
into hopelessness descending.

And an ache
in her heart
toward that dream, retreating,
left a wake
of small waves
in circles never completing.

Goddesses and sirens like Circe can be difficult to deal with, as Ulysses and his men discovered.


In the next poem, “The Divide,” please keep in mind that manatees have been mistaken for mermaids and mermen…

The Divide
by Michael R. Burch

The sea was not salt the first tide …
was man born to sorrow that first day,
the moon—a pale beacon across the Divide,
the brighter for longing, an object denied—
the tug at his heart's pink, bourgeoning clay?

The sea was not salt the first tide …
but grew bitter, bitter—man's torrents supplied.
The bride of their longing—forever astray,
her shield a cold beacon across the Divide,
flashing pale signals: Decide. Decide.
Choose me, or His Brightness, I will not stay.

The sea was not salt the first tide …
imploring her, ebbing: Abide, abide.

The silver fish flash there, the manatees gray.

The moon, a pale beacon across the Divide,
has taught us to seek Love's concealed side:
the dark face of longing, the poets say.

The sea was not salt the first tide …
the moon a pale beacon across the Divide.

For “The Divide” I prefer the slightly longer and rounder "bourgeoning" to the more common "burgeoning." The unconventional line breaks aside, this is a villanelle.



I Panajia I gorgona (“The Mermaid Madonna”)
by Michael R. Burch

To touch—the trembling eagerness of fingers
that sightless, in blind darkness, knew to *****,
to seize the hand outstretched, and thus to hope ...
such was your touch, and softly, now, it lingers:

fond memory! I do not understand
this foreign hand that grasps mine now: crude claws’
rude pincers, which engage, but without cause
except to suffocate me in strange sands.

O softer than your mermaid’s swimming tresses:
your arcane touch, your almost human hand!
You held a shell shaped like an ampersand
close to my ear; the surging sea’s caresses

spoke to my heart ... until Gorgona neared
on crablike feet: repulsive, skittering, weird.



Strange Tides, Stranger Tidings
by Michael R. Burch

for Sharon Rose

She walked into the sea one night
to never be seen again;
the Maelstrom made her hair a fright
as she left the world of men.
Some say she thus gained second sight.
Beware strange tides! Amen.

The first year of her life was hard;
the second harder still.
Like a cameo carved out of sard
she bent to God’s harsh will.
At last her doctors all agreed:
“Just give her some **** pill!”

The years flashed by; she did not age
so much as disappeared.
For who could see human dignity
in a thing small, wizened, weird?
At last she had no memory
save all she’d ever feared.

Then the sea called to her strangely,
as if the Voice of God:
“I repent, O, I repent
of my Anger and my Rod!
Now I only wish to hold you,
and have you Tulip-Cod!”

She thought her nickname sweet indeed;
she did not stop to think,
for who can doubt the Word of God?
She tottered to the brink
of Doom itself, an ancient crone
doomed like a stone: to sink.

She made a votive offering;
she cast a lonely spell
upon the sea, before she stepped
into the gates of Hell;
the Maelstrom took her greedily;
she bade the world, “Farewell!”

So what became of her, you ask?
I can’t pretend to say:
did Michael and the Devil
contend for her that day?
Did the Voice of God mislead her,
or the wind lead her astray?

But sometimes late at night
when the ocean’s dreary roar
abates somewhat, an eerie light
gleams on that rocky shore,
and a lovely Mermaid, tulip-white,
sings, tremulous and pure ...

sweet ancient songs of ancient wrongs
the “love” of God endures.

Amen



Floating
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 19

Memories flood the sand’s unfolding scroll;
they pour in with the long, cursive tides of night.

Memories of revenant blue eyes and wild lips
moist and frantic against my own.

Memories of ghostly white limbs …
of soft sighs
heard once again in the surf’s strangled moans.

We meet in the scarred, fissured caves of old dreams,
green waves of algae billowing about you,
becoming your hair.

Suspended there,
where pale sunset discolors the sea,
I see all that you are
and all that you have become to me.

Your love is a sea,
and I am its trawler—
harbored in dreams,
I ride out night’s storms.

Unanchored, I drift through the hours before morning,
dreaming the solace of your warm *******,
pondering your riddles, savoring the feel
of the explosions of your hot, saline breath.

And I rise sometimes
from the tropical darkness
to gaze once again out over the sea …
You watch in the moonlight
that brushes the water;

bright waves throw back your reflection at me.

“Floating” is one of my more surreal poems, as the sea and lover become one, in the form of a water nymph or mermaid. I believe I wrote this one at age 19. It has been published by Penny Dreadful, Romantics Quarterly, Boston Poetry Magazine and Poetry Life & Times. The poem was originally published as "Entanglements."



Nothing Returns
by Michael R. Burch

A wave implodes,
impaled upon
impassive rocks …

this evening
the thunder of the sea
is a wild music filling my ear …

you are leaving
and the ungrieving
winds demur:

telling me
that nothing returns
as it was before,

here where you have left no mark
upon this dark
Heraclitean shore.



Bikini
by Michael R. Burch

Undersea, by the shale and the coral forming,
by the shell’s pale rose and the pearl’s bright eye,
through the sea’s green bed of lank seaweed worming
like entangled hair where cold currents rise …
something lurks where the riptides sigh,
something curious, old and wise.

Something old when the world was forming
now lifts its beak, its snail-blind eye,
and, with tentacles like Medusa's squirming,
it feels the cloud blot out the skies' …
then shudders, settles with a sigh,
understanding man’s demise.



I think the octopus is evidence of three things: that there are aliens, that they live among us, and that they are infinitely wiser than we are …

The Octopi Jars
by Michael R. Burch

Long-vacant eyes
now lodged in clear glass,
a-swim with pale arms
as delicate as angels'…

you are beyond all hope
of salvage now…
and yet I would pause,
no, fear!,
to once touch
your arcane beaks…

I, more alien than you
to this imprismed world,
notice, most of all,
the scratches on the inside surfaces
of your hermetic cells …

and I remember documentaries of albino Houdinis
slipping like wraiths through walls of shipboard aquariums,
slipping down decks' brine-lubricated planks,
spilling jubilantly into the dark sea,
parachuting down down down through clouds of pallid ammonia …

and I now know this: you were unlike me …
your imprisonment was never voluntary.



Ebb Tide
by Michael R. Burch

Massive, gray, these leaden waves
bear their unchanging burden—
the sameness of each day to day

while the wind seems to struggle to say
something half-submerged planks at the mouth of the bay
might nuzzle limp seaweed to understand.

Now collapsing dull waves drain away
from the unenticing land;
shrieking gulls shadow fish through salt spray—
whitish streaks on a fogged silver mirror.

Sizzling lightning impresses its brand.
Unseen fingers scribble something in the wet sand.

Originally published by Southwest Review



Contraire
by Michael R. Burch

Where there was nothing
but emptiness
and hollow chaos and despair,

I sought Her ...

finding only the darkness
and mournful silence
of the wind entangling her hair.

Yet her name was like prayer.

Now she is the vast
starry tinctures of emptiness
flickering everywhere

within me and about me.

Yes, she is the darkness,
and she is the silence
of twilight and the night air.

Yes, she is the chaos
and she is the madness
and they call her Contraire.



I wrote “Nevermore” in my late teens, under the rather obvious influence of Edgar Allan Poe…

Nevermore!
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 18-19

Nevermore! O, nevermore!
shall the haunts of the sea
—the swollen tide pools
and the dark, deserted shore—
mark her passing again.

And the salivating sea
shall never kiss her lips
nor caress her ******* and hips
as she dreamt it did before,
once, lost within the uproar.

The waves will never **** her,
nor take her at their leisure;
the sea gulls shall not have her,
nor could she give them pleasure ...
She sleeps, forevermore!

She sleeps forevermore,
a ****** save to me
and her other lover,
who lurks now, safely covered
by the restless, surging sea.

And, yes, they sleep together,
but never in that way ...
For the sea has stripped and shorn
the one I once adored,
and washed her flesh away.

He does not stroke her honey hair,
for she is bald, bald to the bone!
And how it fills my heart with glee
to hear them sometimes cursing me
out of the depths of the demon sea ...

their skeletal love—impossibility!



Sea Dreams
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 18

I.
In timeless days
I've crossed the waves
of seaways seldom seen.
By the last low light of evening
the breakers that careen
then dive back to the deep
have rocked my ship to sleep,
and so I've known the peace
of a soul at last at ease
there where Time's waters run
in concert with the sun.

With restless waves
I've watched the days’
slow movements, as they hum
their antediluvian songs.
Sometimes I've sung along,
my voice as soft and low
as the sea's, while evening slowed
to waver at the dim
mysterious moonlit rim
of dreams no man has known.

In thoughtless flight,
I've scaled the heights
and soared a scudding breeze
over endless arcing seas
of waves ten miles high.
I've sheared the sable skies
on wings as soft as sighs
and stormed the sun-pricked pitch
of sunset’s scarlet-stitched,
ebullient dark demise.

I've climbed the sun-cleft clouds
ten thousand leagues or more
above the windswept shores
of seas no man has sailed
— great seas as grand as hell's,
shores littered with the shells
of men's "immortal" souls —
and I've warred with dark sea-holes
whose open mouths implored
their depths to be explored.

And I've grown and grown and grown
till I thought myself the king
of every silver thing …

But sometimes late at night
when the sorrowing wavelets sing
sad songs of other times,
I taste the windborne rime
of a well-remembered day
on the whipping ocean spray,
and I bow my head to pray …

II.
It's been a long, hard day;
sometimes I think I work too hard.
Tonight I'd like to take a walk
down by the sea —
down by those salty waves
brined with the scent of Infinity,
down by that rocky shore,
down by those cliffs that I used to climb
when the wind was **** with a taste of lime
and every dream was a sailor's dream.

Then small waves broke light,
all frothy and white,
over the reefs in the ramblings of night,
and the pounding sea
—a mariner’s dream—
was bound to stir a boy's delight
to such a pitch
that he couldn't desist,
but was bound to splash through the surf in the light
of ten thousand stars, all shining so bright.

Christ, those nights were fine,
like a well-aged wine,
yet more scalding than fire
with the marrow’s desire.

Then desire was a fire
burning wildly within my bones,
fiercer by far than the frantic foam …
and every wish was a moan.
Oh, for those days to come again!
Oh, for a sea and sailing men!
Oh, for a little time!

It's almost nine
and I must be back home by ten,
and then … what then?
I have less than an hour to stroll this beach,
less than an hour old dreams to reach …
And then, what then?

Tonight I'd like to play old games—
games that I used to play
with the somber, sinking waves.
When their wraithlike fists would reach for me,
I'd dance between them gleefully,
mocking their witless craze
—their eager, unchecked craze—
to batter me to death
with spray as light as breath.

Oh, tonight I'd like to sing old songs—
songs of the haunting moon
drawing the tides away,
songs of those sultry days
when the sun beat down
till it cracked the ground
and the sea gulls screamed
in their agony
to touch the cooling clouds.
The distant cooling clouds.

Then the sun shone bright
with a different light
over different lands,
and I was always a pirate in flight.

Oh, tonight I'd like to dream old dreams,
if only for a while,
and walk perhaps a mile
along this windswept shore,
a mile, perhaps, or more,
remembering those days,
safe in the soothing spray
of the thousand sparkling streams
that rush into this sea.
I like to slumber in the caves
of a sailor's dark sea-dreams …
oh yes, I'd love to dream,
to dream
and dream
and dream.

“Sea Dreams” is one of my longer and more ambitious early poems. To the best of my recollection, I wrote “Sea Dreams” around age 18, circa 1976-1977.



Alice
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 15

There were nights when we would wander together
the banks of a lake cast in strange monotones
where once I had wandered before,
lost and alone.

And along the moonlit banks we strolled
the silver waterfalls recoiled
to, screaming, die upon the folds
of tranquil waters far below.
For tranquil waters fed below
on melting ice and crumbling stone.

The nights we spent beside that lake
we spent there with the stately drake,
the graceful swan, the grotesque eel,
close to the sound of a waterfall's peal,
close to the sound of a lake's midnight meal.

And Alice's hair hung like hacked hemp,
gnarled and twisted on the wind,
glistening with an unearthly light,
Medusan at midnight.

And her lips shone with a radiance
that blinded my eyes
as they closed in reply
to the slightest pressure of her touch;
and I wanted her so much ...
but did not have her,
for the lake that gave her soon took her away.

For she died in the mists of a moonlit night
with a rush of green water filling her mouth; ...

then the skies
rang with her startled cries
and her algaed eyes
gleamed agony.
She pled with me ...

"Come too, come too!" She softly begged.
"Oh, no! I can't!" I witlessly said.
And she, the enchantress, was ****** down;
some will say that she drowned ...

But her eyes were the eyes of that eerie lake
and her lips mouthed its soft and eloquent plea
in a voice weirdly ancient, wild and free,
crying, "I am Alice ... come to me!"

This is one of my earliest poems, written around age 15.

Keywords/Tags: love, romantic, romanticism, mermaid, siren, Lorelei, sea, night, dreams, eyes, lips, limbs, *******, breath, sunset, surf, waves, caves, moon, moonlight, seaweed, hair, storms

Writing music is the sweet pear dream
I plucked from a choir in springling years.
Back then I also dreamt of mermaid kisses
and reality television.
Why would a beast wish me music now?

I’d burnt out of the city, the long hours, high pressure financial job; and the uptight, high strung, high maintenance girlfriend. I’d walked out and away from the mess that had been my life, and found this place, far from it all, where time slowed, almost crawled, where there were no expectations, no schedules, no rules. Life was lived minute-by-minute, never giving a thought to what had to be done tonight, tomorrow, or for that matter, ever

I’d flown in to the frenzied capital, rented a car, and made my way out of the beehive, towards the Caribbean coast, buying a map and following the road eastward, not knowing where I was going, or what I had in mind. I just wanted to get away, to be lost in the jungle.

I would know the place when i saw it. It would feel right, like rain on a warm afternoon. I reached the coast, drove south, stopping at every village and bar along the way. There were barely any tourist, not much to see, no white sandy beaches, no ancient ruins, just countless impoverished fishing villages and family run kitchens to feed the locals, the fishermen, and occasional daring tourists

Night was coming. I stopped at a village, found a kitchen by the shore, and ordered my usual, casado and una cerveza; my favorite. I asked the house mama for a room. She said they didn’t have rooms, only hammocks on the edge of the shore. I paid for the meal and a hammock. A girl took my hand and showed me to the hammock. The fisherman were already asleep in their hammocks, their boats shored, nets folded on the side, ready for their early morning foray into the turquoise sea.

I woke, gently, to the sun brightening in the sky. I sat up, feet hanging off the hammock barely touching the sand. I got up, walked to the kitchen and sat at a table in a make shift court yard, palm leaves shading me from the sun, swaying slowly to the warm sea breeze. The house mama brought me gallo pinto with cafe con leche. Nothing had ever tasted so good.

I got on the road, driving along the coast, to my left was an endless expanse of turquoise to the horizon, to my right, unbroken wall of jungle. I drove nonstop, till I got hungry and stopped at a village for gas and lunch. I walked into the trading post, and looked around. There were all sorts of supplies remote villagers and fisherman would need. On a whim, I bought a hammock, machete, water, canned goods, and beer, what I thought were all the essentials.

I pulled out my map. There were no towns along this section of the road, only the occasional village. I was going to find a stretch of beach, setup camp, and chill, gazing out to the horizon until the sun set.

I drove slow, checking out the beaches for a place to camp. The shore was a continuous, nondescript, pale brown, until i rounded a bend and the view opened up to a cove. Through the palms, I could see a black sand beach. Intrigued, I pulled the car to the side of the road, and hiked down to the beach.

It was surreal. A secluded cove, black sand, fallen trees in the surf, the bark worn away from the abrasive sanding, branches reaching into the sky as if pleading for help. It was beautiful and eerie. But underneath it, I had a sense of foreboding. I couldn't figure out why and let it go, as I had found my little piece of paradise.  

This was the spot I was looking for, far from the villages, secluded, isolated, unworldly. I unpacked my stuff, opened a beer, setup the hammock, and settled in, slowly, eventually, falling asleep.

I awoke at twilight. The temperature had cooled. If was comfortable, slightly balmy. The sun had set, the moon risen, hanging over the turquoise sea, casting a long reflection to the shore.

I looked out over the water, saw something, a shark, a dolphin, breaking the mirrored surface, probably hunting the shoals for food. I dismissed it, and thought twice about going for a swim.

I saw it again, this time close. I watched, curious, hoping to get a better view, when I saw a head, a human head, slowly bobbing up and down. I got out of my hammock, walked to the shore to get a closer look.

I looked out and saw eyes. The eyes of a woman looking intently back at me.  An uneasiness rose up inside of me. What was a lone woman doing in the water, in the evening, this far off the beaten path. She wasn’t thrashing, screaming, just bobbing in the water looking at me.

She disappeared under the water. I watched, waiting for her to reappear. Was she a scuba diver? She surfaced, this side of the break, half her head protruding from the water. I could see her hair, eyes, and nose. She wasn’t bobbing, but kneeling in the the water.

We stood there, looking at each other. I didn’t move, didn’t want to scare her away. She moved closer to shore. I got a better look at her. She had black hair, tanned skin, and big eyes, like those of a Japanese anime character. I blinked, not understanding or what to make of her eyes. I wanted to back away, get some distance between me and her, but I couldn't. I was frozen in place.  

She stood up, slowly, the water dripping down her hair, shoulders, chest. She was naked, tall, slim, with an hour glass figure and full, firm *******. She had the body of a goddess. She slowly walked up the beach, the full moon clearly visible behind her. I could see the rest of her, curved hips, long legs. She was a fantasy, walking out of my dreams into reality.

She walked up to me, stopped an arm’s length away. I looked into her eyes. They were big, beautiful, turquoise green, like the color of the sea behind her, even more unbelievable, were her pupils. They were vertical, like those of a cat.

Fear rose up in me. My gut told me to run. But another part of me was intrigued, worst, turned on, so I stayed, frozen in place. She had the beauty of a goddess, I was enthralled, I knew it. She knew it.  Her right hand slowly reached out to me, touching my cheek, gently. Her eyes looking into mine for a reaction. I was getting flushed. My heart raced. My breath fast, a mixture of fear and lust. She put her palm around the nap of my neck, pulled me slowly to her, tilting her head, and kissed me, softly, gently on the lips. I started kissing back, getting aroused. She put her arm across my small of my back and pulled me into her, my body pressed into hers. I could feel her softness, warmth, inviting, and comforting.

I put my hands on her hips, sliding down to cup her checks. She started to kiss me more aggressively, sliding her tongue in my mouth, ******* my lower lip into her mouth and biting down hard. I could feel the lust and passion in her kisses. I succumbed to her seduction.

She lowered me down gently on to the sand, straddling, kissing me ever more fervently. She started unbuttoning my shirt, then ripped it open. She slide off my shorts and mounted me, sliding down to bottom of the shaft, rocking back and forth, her hands pressed against my chest. Her moans were soft, spasmodic, as she tilted her head back. She increased the intensity of her rocking, her moans grew louder, more intense, more visceral.

Her beauty was intoxicating, her moans exciting, her every rock getting me closer, amplifying my arousal, till I came, convulsing in her arms, in ecstasy.

She rolled over, flipping me on top of her, making sure I was deep inside her, a slight smile of satisfaction on her lips.

She laid her head back onto the sand. I slide off and to her side her. She got up, looked me in the eyes, then started walking towards the water. I got up, chasing after her. She walked deeper into the surf. I followed.

When the water reached her waist, she dove in the an coming wave and disappeared. I expected her to surface, but she didn’t. I walked faster, then paddled, then dove after her. I swam out, beyond my footing, past the breakers. I treaded water looking for her. I swam out further, knowing the danger.

She reappeared, bobbing in the water, looking at me expressionless. Her eyes said everything, seducing me to her. I swam towards her, as she swam away, going further out to sea. The water got deeper, bluer, colder.

She stopped. I caught up to her. We floated looking at each other. She drifted into me. Kissed me. I put an arm around her waist and pressed her into me. I wanted her, to have her, forever. I knew she was magical, grasped that she was a mermaid. I didn’t care. I was oversensed, no longer thinking, just feeling. I wanted more of her.

We sank into the water, entwined, embracing, kissing. I couldn’t get enough. I needed air, but ignored it, preferring the euphoria of her body. The urgency to breath grew, becoming uncomfortable, then painful. I stopped kissing and let her go. She held on, tightening her arms around me. I pushed against her, trying to break free. My lungs caught fire, my mind panicked. I thrashed against her. Then all went black, my body relaxed. I went flaccid, as a peace came over me. She held on, as I convulsed, a final time, in her arms.

I clung to you like a lifeline-
A floating buoy in a violent sea
But when I let go of you
Into the deep, deep
Blue,
I found that I had gills—
And I could breathe.

Lost out at sea on my only boat,
in my panic I went and lost its only oar,
now I needed a way to get to shore,
oh, by the way, it’s not that I have been here before.

I have been to the beach even as a child,
sea she has always been kind and mild,
waves it seemed to me played with me and smiled,
seashore had my imagination run wild.

Rough conditions and a rudderless boat,
only love for the sea and no one else to see,
telling myself I will reach this shore it’s easy,
praying I will soon do something gutsy.

I haven’t seen a mermaid,
but she was right there for my aid,
guiding me like a beacon that was putting on a parade,
her fins were as pretty even when they swayed.

The night must have passed,
Sun hit my face and the sea was vast,
I woke up wondering why I was not at the shore,
my mermaid was with me I swore,
the lady yelled “are you okay” like a roar,
Her badge said she was from the Marine Corps.

I had seen my Mermaid.

most nights
you decant into my head wounds
you suggest my makeup
orchestrate my being
and sometimes
for fun
prank me with ridiculous ideas
that inspire some absurd social pratfall

lure

you make me warm and sure of myself
struck and sense numbed
but
floss in the memory

tide

i am a Diving Suit
but in misuse
i am a suit
the pressure
the deep ocean
filled from the inside
cold
darkness
and nutrients  
but
i am filled from the inside

pipette
you tap drops
into special valves
along the sides of the aquarium helmet
you decorate my inner-scape
with harvesting monsters
and phosphorescence
you deteriorate the textile of my sadness
a thorough jettison

lull

via your Vegas
your adolescence
i follow your string of lights
deep sea
skiving mortality
embracing your malady
with no ill effects ?
sink deeper still
i am leadened
to your charge
and plumb to your will
deeper