White speckles adagio,
         Battu,
           Cabriole,
Finishing their performance with a
                                                                  Pirouette
Into the shriveled
       Grass
Curtsying to the
          Sun.

I tremble because I am not the breeze,
because I will never be the speckles of rudty sunset on the surf,
because no one will ever feel me like they do the rain.

I weep because I can not nurture even half as much as the soil,
and because I have not solidified enough to be a stone.

My mundane body quakes with despair;
because I am too complex to be as simple as the clouds,
and I will never break as beautifully as a barreling wave.

I am terrified because I don't know if I will ever be more than Human.

your body is my habitual enclave,
I know the roads, the routes, the rails,

the way it sparks in the night, how it creaks with the sun.
I coast your body like a map,
the compass in my palm quivers, the needle
whirls and swivels, disoriented, north left behind.
instead I will globe-trot through your anatomy,
with no concerns of foreign lands, with languages
of gibberish and people unfamiliar.
first, I will plunge into your shoulders,
gape at the brawn, the vastness,
compare them to the beautiful mountains seen in Colorado.
next, I will huddle in the wool of your torso,
stealing a quick snooze,
submerged in the berceuse of your coronaries.
afterward, I will drift among your hands,
skipping among the grooves,
stumbling upon the calluses.
then, I will float among your lips,
stealing speckles of salt while playfully
greeting your lingual.
and, and, and, my darling, this adventure
will exhaust me.
so I will traverse back, through your lips, your hands,
your torso, your shoulders, until
I come to my favorite monument.
they are waves full of sapphire, clashing among
charcoal thunderstorms, dancing along
fields of jade.
two orbs of magnificence (and mine)

you will smile, and ask how the journey was,
and I will reply, as always:

“unforgettable”

The lustrous supplicant skin, virgin red,
Blooms with the misty imprint of her reflection:
A bloodied, ballooning head
Swelling in the suspension of the ruby fruit.

Its two lewd leaves' dark velvety greens
Drape to the sides like a wind-torn vail.
Her hair tucked behind her two ears,
As the red moon spans the black of her eye.

She has possessed the tree of hooks.
Down to the purple roots that dreamed up
This ever-extending bough,
Offering itself with quiet conviction.  

The fruit brooded deep within her.
A heart of maroon clay shaped by desire
Hanging in her borrowed ribs,
Now mimics the rose-colored bulb.

Her tongue unearths like a worm
From crimson lips, priming the reddening slit.
Now slowly, with animal instinct,
The teeth press against the earthen neck of scarlet flesh.

Upon inventing death,
Her thighs flush of their eggshell-white.
Her two legs, a pallid stem
Propping the sprouting weedy tuft.

The gate of wild hair goes rivering out
With dry earth and greenery.
Flower heads, some living some dead,
Landslide out of her endless womb.

The tree's leaves are now tawny with age-
The dry, fiery speckles shed and scatter.
The bare branches, a hand of upturned roots,
Swallows her into a cage of tumbleweed.

And out of the corner of her eye, exits a black snake.
A squirming lock seeming to crawl
Out of her hair and into the distance.
The shadowed braid leaves her stiff and greying with age...

Her dark visions turn stale and melt in paradise.
Dawn brushes bronze in the sky
And the apple-dreamer wakes in her bed of grass.
She rises and slowly approaches the tree.

I used to like you a lot.
i don’t know what fucking happened.
we’re children and you pushed me off the swings,
off the playground,
out of the park.
And now my best friend only wants
me for what i can say about you,
you sea urchin.
bouquet of prickling spikes
piercing my jagged rib bones.
rip through me,
feasting scoundrel,
you vixen, you fox.
you viper.

wipe her from my soggy slate.
dinner plate? it’s empty.
everyone is the garbage disposal,
grinding my teaspoons of self-worth
into dusty pieces. i am the garbage.

and i never pegged you as one
to leave me in a  
dark parking lot,
shadows curling their bony fingers
around my purple lungs,
but she found you making love to
him in the same car we sat.
the bull frogs saw what you did.

i’m warning you to stop pretending
like you’re still a fawn.
a doe-like female.
i can see through the speckles
on your face
and your mixed tapes.

i don’t have heart left for you,
you murder.
kneel in front of his  knobby
knees. beg,  
bitch.
muck him up and then
lick him clean,
feline.
slink past me in the night,
in the broad daylight.
you are not a spy
i can see your arteries.

I used a red sharpie
to write out
                 ”I am happy”
on blue-lined
notebook paper.
The ink bled through,
                 red speckles
spotting and blossoming
and tarnishing
the white.

I crossed out the
                   ”am”
and replaced it with
                   ”was”
and let my wrist
bleed red ink, too.

The kid saw a tired, dead face as the speckles of light disappeared behind his ears.
The robes, the bones, present in the water, present in the sunset,
Present in the quietness, the silent place,
in the tranquility of the night and in the peace of time.
The robe over the bones, present in her tired face
The insignificant, the never present, now always the ever-present and ubiquitous
What would become happiness, what would become joy
became sadness, became remorse.

The shells lined up nicely.
"At attention," the conch yelled.
He was curled black, with boiled blue spikes.
And so they stayed, in a perfect line against the wall,
until the wave,
washing ashore, it plucked three.
One was an abalone,
almost full grown,
with five holes descending down its left side.
A sheen of gold and silver out,
murky indigo and forest green in.
He lost grip first,
and was pulled into an incoming breaker.
The second was a conch.
Chocolate and vanilla swirls coated the outer layers
leading in to slight pink.
Her name was Neapolitan.
She was once an adult shell of the queen conch,
washed ashore and set into a line by small hands,
that were gentle and soft.
Zander
A soft voice called.
Inhaled by the mouth of the ocean,
exhaled into a bout of seaweed.  
She was lost.
The last,
was a cowry shell.
He was old,
or at least he imagined so.
This was not the first time he had washed ashore,
nor had he figured, would it be the last.
His back was ivory white
with brown speckles,
in such a pattern
that he imagined himself to be, at times, a turtle.
He had first felt and then saw reflections of himself in sea glass. He was gathered in a bucket and rubbed so that his design reverberated until he felt, every shimmer of himself.
Knowing not what lay ahead,
but understanding,
he held no grip and went where the ocean led.
It's getting dark Zander.
The others gasped,
in horror their screams rasped.
"Save us. Plea...se he...l...p."
As another wave crashed into the wall and stole four more,
again,
till all were cast away from the wall
to be laden across the expanse of sand.

Soft brown eyes stared,
at the empty holes,
where shells had been placed,
as decorations to a most deserving sand castle.
Turrets and towers,
hard packed by child hands,
with a red flag flapping to the sea breeze.
A crude skull was drawn,
for it was a pirate fascination that encapsulated this year.
He had spent hours seeking and finding,
the perfect art,
to be the binding,
to hold his wall against all defense,
but all had fallen in the first wave of battle.
"Oh well," he muttered.
He would try again tomorrow.