The Red Lady

You walk her plank blissful because the end is the peak
of collusion. She welts her skin with a name tattoo.
The ocean’s salt is ship’s tender sedative.

The blade was made in the furnace where excess is made and tiger
and where we sleep like vampires when God comes knocking.

She constructs a man limb by limb from the earth, and he
belongs to us, so we tear him apart because he belongs to us.
Let’s leave cloud out of our play because he’s amateur
and because his mouth does nothing for my hairy vacancies.

Then Soul show’d her calf and Captain slather’d her
and converg’d upon her fresh, ephemeral flesh.
Jetsam, force, bilge, reef, wake and scurvy:
ripe for female climate.