The wave is the way
a dance makes water stay;
a laugh that walks through hills
astray. The path that laid the course,
now still.

But again, it breaks! With arms
and flailing legs they spray
and spatter it about on the
hot concrete. They spit and
shout and jump and swim
and ****** my way
a million little knives that cut
the sun, it hurts my eyes.
They laugh
a laugh that sinks the drowning
and smothers their voice with cold wrinkly fingers
so they quit singing,
begin mouthing.

Go jump in, you silly goose!
You’re supposed to swim in swimming pools!
Here, grab a towel and some slippers too.

I walk along the spots of wet,
left by those who were soaked and drenched
as they came and went, came and went.
The waves they made were sloppy, yes
but smiles, too, can be like this.

So I don’t know why
my toes gripped the edge when
my eyes saw me in my clear reflection.

We live to reproduce
the one inside the nothing,
the circle within without,
to survive, in any way,
the flesh-ripping teeth,
the fear of blood and of pain,
the fall and the scream and the tears—
we live to try surviving it all
with the eternal hope in us
that death has never lived,
and that life, this true love
will never die.

My grandmother’s fragility sinks under the blanket
like a ship on its final voyage, when it becomes sea.
I picture this as she sips sugar water with parted lips.
I watch her in silence from a small, faraway room
because the door is slightly ajar, and there enters a light
from her window that comes to rest humbly on her pale eyes.

I start to wonder what they must be thinking, her eyes,
as they begin to close, slowly, and lashes become blankets.
Do they fear the heavy, trespassing breath of darkness that smothers light?
Or do they smile and find comfort from the warm sea
of prayers that wash up on the shore of her room
and carry with their waves the whispers of my silent lips?

My mother ambles through thick air, talks with dry hushed lips
to her sister, who understands. My mother’s eyes
wander like sad gusts into the emptiness of my room.
They tell me she wants to bundle me in a blanket,
place me in a basket, and let me float away with the sea
until I become the constant water of her veins, pure and light.

Tired minutes pass, and the sun is coming down; the light
that had rested on my grandmother’s eyes now sleeps on her lips.
The glowing sun reflects in my face, and the sea
in the sky changes wistfully from a sad red to a soft orange, like the eyes
of my mother, as she sits next to her and strokes her blanket.
With the dimming of day, I begin to feel colder in my faraway room.

My sister sits down with me on the couch, but there is no room
so I rise and walk out the door, moving towards the light
that silks through the window and trickles onto her blanket.
My feet make no sound and my breath waits patiently behind lips
as I see my mother, her solemn eyes
more profound than the deepest sea.

I look at my grandmother as she floats in the sea.
Blue water enters under the crack of the door and fills the room.
It starts at my ankles, rises to my neck, and stops just below the eyes.
I see my grandmother sail and sink like a light
ship on her last voyage. The water kisses her with blue lips
and embraces her in a warm blanket.


In my room I put on a blanket because I am cold like the sea.
Light has fallen, and my glass eyes
crack like the tremor of lips.

How fine is the crystal
of the palace which you ponder!
Upon the weight so parlously,
suppose it’s what you conjured?
Luscious silk to kiss the skin
to smooth away the semblance.
Chandeliers that shimmer
from the ceilings of the breathless.
True passion in the luster
of all satisfied desires.
And a spark in that center
of that sentimental fire—

Mighty fine, I say,
long’s you hide me,
all the mirrors
where the glance really falls
    eyed glint bouncing off
lubricous rocked walls, in cavernous darkness
from just moonlight
our moonlight.

You cannot see me but     I am
Somewhere           Underneath
The surface      Just underneath
About to break       Always still
Just            Barely           Under      
A gilded barege of light  Shifts    
Liquid leaves in gouache   Fall    
Trinkling             Over my face.

Don’t believe the sign
that is clawed from another’s cave
of a silly heart, onto some door
in some beautiful garden on a special day.
That scraped shine, that which
opens wide the view for you
and you remember as a sharp, etched
slowly focusing glaze on your time
was probably made with some key
of some fool who regrets it now, no doubt,
as you do.

Nor should you believe another’s photograph of it
and take it as yours, or the same,
and think that this is what you were going
to write your book about, one day, all along.
That book was full of naïve wonders
and melodies you paid too much attention to, anyway.
So just allow what you love the most
to be scrapped and substituted.
Words are just words, you see.

So what do you believe?
The motionless things of a winter walk, I suppose.
They are the kindest.
They know not to talk to you, not to say anything
you could possible believe.

I ask—I know,

but did I? pull you close only
only
to keep from flying away?

I once knew I cupped your head,
like water, to my lips.

I think I know now, hauntingly,
I might have wrenched your face to mine
like a ravenous and terrified animal
and kept on your lips but to seal my mouth,
a stormy vacuum,
that ****** ceaselessly the breath of too much
                  in the attempt to inhale one.

****** dry, it became nothing.

Still, it could not be helped.
Meaning would be given to the thoughtless
and its name—passion—would be answered,
its sweet breath ****** on.
But I
I never breathed anything.
And yet there was more sustaining my life.
What sweet did I taste? Its breath or
the more?

You would rename it—silly—to yourself.
You did not know you whispered it to me always.
I only heard it when our cover would
slit briefly open—painfully, and inevitably.
Your breath in these thin moments was bitter, bitter
to you too.
So we covered the slits and sealed the gape,
told ourselves we knew
all the clothes were off, together, for a reason.
Convinced ourselves we were really touching what was untouchable,
for a reason.

But, if since the very beginning
your mouth was to move that way,
was to say those words—and if your eyes were always
going to look like autumn trees and unsay them—
was it for one or wasn’t it?
Is there something at all to smile about
just passing through our geometry?

I ask this to myself—of course. But,
but
today’s sun blades the sky too much like yesterday’s!
So your eyes return! They return to reach! to pull me out to free fields
as they used to.
Your sundress still sparks an Aztec flame
as the colorless crowd ashes.
To me your scene is still an answer
and your breath can still warm truth
as sweet as tragedy on my skin.

The lining of homes around me
glints light red
and I stare at its light, after you,
your cutting rays,

because your thought of ending
now kisses mine
and so—still—I can answer

whether, as I am now— you were always
only a memory.