The Sea-Ass

The soothsaying ass of the upturned sea

has pickled brays that turn to gaping yawns.

He beckons lost sailors to his haunt

and floats by crumpling water in his wake,

which turns into a marbled haze. His skin,

thrown over his arched body, brews to the black

and blue of waves that turn to the slippery black

of ass ears while they blend with the cloud-mirrored sea.

Though he once skimmed the shores for sailor skins

or bubbled brains, now he wades with summer yawns

and the passing bait who goad the brine – they awaken

sea foam with each splash. The sea-ass hunts

his malformed prey in sleepless virgin haunts.

At the break of day, his bray, one long black

siren, spurs the bedlam chum to their wake.

The furthest fringe of fungal slime and sea

clings to the moans of victims, but he yawns

at their frenzied efforts to escape his skin –

each joint tightly mapped to the tips of skin

on discarded skeletons. But the haunt

has a way to seduce you, hunted: through ass yawns

that promise you truth, the soothsaying black

one answers with the motion of the sea.

(His eyes mirror his wake;

each wave’s veil compounds the fishy wake.)

Bury the names that cling to your skin

as you dive into this marbled haze of sea.

You’ll see you married hate. His forlorn haunt

becomes your desperate state, his quiet, black

humor tires of your deadlocked mate. He yawns

into a conch shell’s hollow, and his yawn

dissolves in the salty breeze and in the wake

of his water-worn suit of over-worn black.

The coast replaces the murdered gown of skin

that graced your back before the sea-ass’s hunt

stole it from your nameless haunch. This is the sea

that slips your tender muscles free from skin

while black brays rouse the hunt awake.

Here yawns the soothsaying ass of the sea.