Drowning in a Dream of Water

His eyes and mouth are stuffed with Woman,
chips of knowing, though he doesn’t, can’t,
know her. Stark regions, blindfolded,

arks, hurts, hips, he crafts
each longing to save in stain,
a matador’s spilled blood,

his own semen, for taking measure,
circling nipples, lips, distance
from attaining.

He’s further lost than I will ever be,
drowning in a dream of water,
one falling feather loosened from the unity of flock,

not even zero, oddly not odd. He leans a shotgun
like a shepherd’s staff behind her head,
renders her hair in fierce clumps

like a mongrel. He’s sure she’ll vanish
without the horror of the thing to nail her,
that like a spun molecule

she’ll gather against him,
so he tells his friends she’s
nympho, all the various fucks,

before their eyes in daub,
flesh that molts in arrows of viridian.
He paints her shaven and spread.

He splatters a drop of loss
at the center of each eye.
He piles his own skeleton

into the skiff, burlap sack by sack,
while at the dock: the useless guttural
spinning of his detached motor guns.