Siren

Stone drunk, he crashes to the beach
beneath the huts, hearing the waves rush
and dribble off the shingle like an old woman
sucking her teeth. He sees stars swimming,
the moon like a lost coin, frosting the tops
of waves, tricking out the groynes.
The stump of a winch hard by - its cable slack,
its wheel rusted fast. He grabs the cable,
drags himself upright, smacks his lips.
Chyme slips his chin in thick, slickening ribbons.
The wind whips him blind. He needs to piss.

The cable whangs from his hand - the slack snapped,
as if the sea seeks a different purchase on the land.
Shocked, he props himself against the winch,
feeling the wheel clock between his shoulders,
the squeal of steel twisting in its casing, the blood taste
of rust¦

¦and then she comes, rising from the white
flowing bridal veil of light ' her oil-black hair streaming,
her skin slick as sin, her lips glistening, her eyes drawing him¦

Take my hand, she says. Come with me
to the deep, deep comfort of my bed¦

And too easily¦ oh, too easily he goes,
his lust rising - the ice-wet slap against his thighs
like a release. Into the spermy spume she pulls him,
dragging him down to her embrace ' her kiss
sluicing into him, her eyes sucking him in.
Shadows loom in them, vast as ships ' a throbbing,
as of engine shafts, black shapes humping through
the gloom, the pumping-pumping-pumping of his heart.
And then nothing but the ecstacy - the rush. And the
deep, luscious, ribboning hush of sleep.

The morning tide is flocked with gulls,
scrapping over chip packets, rotting fish,
stinking bladder wrack, dog shit, empty bottles,
discarded clothes¦