The velvet trays for tinkers’ jewels hold tackle, tools, and lunch.

He gnaws the Eden apple skull, reads all he knows of life.

He peels the tin for few small fish whose stink he’ll learn to lick.

He stands to pee where all can see the Dutch boy bobber dyke.

So don’t pull me from the water,

Stick your pliers down my throat.

Throw me back in to hook another,

Or let me die in the bottom of the boat.

For sport he cuts and baits the fated wormy Satan hook.

He casts in vain. The surface breaks the body’s sandwich book.

He grabs the prickly sunny, hears the needle nose go crunch,

Scales and disembowels with Caesar’s everlasting knife.

So don’t hold me under water,

Stick your scalpel down my throat.

Let me drown beneath the ether.

Try to scream only kick and croak.

The legal hookers slit the belly of the virgin Venus lure.

The fertile serpents penetrate the baby egg hardboiled.

The lungless sacraments transform the water to wine to blood.

The fish gut fetus flops and gulps on a tin-eared tabloid floor.

So don’t cut me from the water,

Clamp your forceps round my skull.

Send me home to my sister and brother

Or bring me up on the road to hell.