'I have mislaid the torment and the fear'

The cold  
Withers the sky,
Corpse-grey bandage
Shrouds the sea skin.
 
Alone on the beach
Seeking syllables in the sand,
Semaphore of my flagging heart
Braille blinks to Gods of indifference.
Smokey breath of seventh cigarette
Wisps a muddy patina on ocean table.  
 
Heavenly (en)trails  
Tear guts from clouds,
In pumice schorls  
Deep-sleep rain shoals
Sail too close to a heart,
Raw & tender- as if slain
On a butcher’s slab.
 
Brined broken^breakers  
Breach the headland,
Stretch out as a keyboard
Searching the song
Always stuck in my head.
 
Just beyond silence
Stillness moves in the
Hinges of gulls, the sweeping
Plastic bags of the nights glue sniffers.  
The rhythmic hymns of eternal tides.
 
To be, the becoming,
Beside the limbs of a forgotten kite:
Suddenly, emblazoned on the foreshore
My eyes are stitched to a lonely figure.
 
Flickered silhouette >/  like 1950s cine film
Hepburn chic, arms loose in self-embrace,
Stare colder than a head in a noose.
Off-the-shoulder Monroe number,
Uninvited bride to A.N. Other lover.
Is this the woman they called tragedy
Burning Elvis songs into sand?
 
Shall I call to her, call to her,
Wading deeper and deeper,
Or Code Red to awaken
Summer’s sleeping lifeguards.
 
In the flick of my neck  
She has gone.
On the edge of never
Was she ever…..
 
Trudging slowly over wet sand,
A whisky bonfire of the homeless
Allures, flames the road signs
‘Turn left at your dreams and Exi(s)t East.’
 
An old drunk summons
Serpents from his lips,
He may have hissed:
“Draw a line in the sand and never look back.”