They are dumping animal blood into the sea
to bring up the sharks. Sometimes every
aperture of my body leaks blood.
I don't know whether
to pretend that this is natural.
Is there a law about this, a law of nature?
You worship the blood
you call it hysterical bleeding
you want to drink it like milk
you dip your finger into it and write
you faint at the smell of it
you dream of dumping me into the sea.
3.
The tragedy of sex
lies around us, a woodlot
the axes are sharpened for.
The old shelters and huts
stare through the clearing with a certain resolution
- the hermit's cabin, the hunters' shack-
scenes of masturbation
and dirty jokes.
A man's world. But finished.
They themselves have sold it to the machines.
It
all is coming down.
I walk the unconscious forest,
a woman dressed in old army fatigues
that have shrunk to fit her, I am lost
at moments, I feel dazed
by the sun pawing between the trees,
cold in the bog and lichen of the thicket.
Nothing will save this. I am alone
kicking the last rotting logs
with their strange smell of life, not death,
wondering what on earth it all might have become.
