Fresh

 

Fish heads rest on ice

Sparkling diamond gleam

No rubies here

Or crimson smears

Just mouths and eyes fixed in a scream

 

Plundered from dark depths

Where gloomy gardens grow

Through rocks and wrecks

And bottlenecks

Of interminable shadow

 

For a shop window

The murder scene’s precise

No trace of blood

Knives swish and thud

And fish heads rest on ice

 

Sea creatures dispatched

From caverns most profound

A dolphin cries

Thrashes and dies

Your nets greedy for pounds

 

Seagulls fill the sky

Their song covets the deck

Discarded guts

Unwanted cuts

Sweet death for them to peck

 

Do they sing of wrecks?

Of meal-boats sunk and drowned?

And would they cry

Were you to lie

In caverns most profound?

 

Fish heads rest on ice

A memory of the flesh

Your morning’s kill

Weakens my will

Like slaughter labelled fresh