Green Woman Fish Poem by GRANT FRASER

I had to look
you up, and couldn't
find the right thing
to think me along, in
what it was, I was after,

there's not a word
that won't come back later,
and punch me somewhere sacred,

or that your big silver
green tail
might just whip round
unexpectedly, and hurl
me off this crumbling
old thing of a chair,

but that's it...

I don't expect to know
why half of you became
like that,
only that the Gods no longer
really live around here,

and yeah,
maybe it's because your
just a freak or something,

I mean c'mon, half fish,
half woman,
I mean who do you actually expect
to love or **** you?

go, brandish some kind of hate,
if isn't too late, for maybe you can
meet, mate, and go off with him,

and yet everything has changed,
the rusty chains that bind you,
is just all human weight
from the waist up,

I can't cut free what's not
already there, for you to swim
where, I ask, are you frightened?

I am!

swim this way and that...
like the mad thing, you made me,
a kind of fish that breathes...

with a heart beat always about
to turn to stone,
running in and out of so many
toilets,

at times, looking deep
into the clear flush,
longing, for the great
clean water,
to swallow me back...