I
Thin scales of self dry my waters
murky-lit flakes      mackled mirrors      

tilt slightly only because shaken
by silent throes      invisible current

(to swimming’s orchestra, I’ve been deaf)

latch onto nothing but fish-bone      
fish-meat under      latch and tilt
      cold      iridescent      like hot slaps

II
A native child      alone goes fishing
names me yen      (“the hologram fish”)

yen, sparkling, becomes
his first catch      his first glory and pride

Which way must yen be tilting then
in the sun?      for him to unhook the gaff
see yen soak, see yen drip      brazen
against an impossible smaragdine sky      air      
and toss it back     back to water?

III
Having gasped for it      maybe
I should not be that easily set free
I am human only like yen      craving out
of maddening iridescence            

but it’s a mean trick, child
to lift me in that air like something
      miraculous      and then toss me back

A tilt in the sun must be made to last   I know
a glint      some air briefly on the scales    
a fish, a yen      must then go back to swim
with itself      more clearly in its waters

Oh how I’m glad to have seen you at last!
At least to have seen my inscrutable belief
flash once in the flesh, rushing intense  
like the coming to be of an immemorial dream.
Your look towards me called forth my sea
and shook its floor of live ships that’ve dwelled
too long on the forgotten, spiritless bottom,
so that they rose again to breathe their sails.

But sure enough it was just one! One breath to live.
Just one to hold above because there was just one to give.
I wonder if they’ll remember that still clear sun.
The whole out of the blue before it moved and shuddered
under the fickle ripples as they bowed out and sunk.
To return to the mud where the yearnings are stuck
while the purpose still lies on the surface to be touched.

Oh, if I had not seen you! My ocean still would be.
With no billows to unsettle the pellucidity.
And my ships, they could have seen the bright light of the beam
through will alone at home at the bottom of the sea.
But now? To watch the light, remember heat, to feel the cold—
It’s all the same when the dream’s untold!
But I’ll listen to the silence and endure not knowing I’ll survive,
if you promise to forever give me that culminating smile.

I Inhaled so many silent forgotten gasps today.
They passed over my pulsating skin
like jeweled kings in pauper’s clothes.

Morning blue sheets sticking
like sparkling pool water as I twirled
my Georgia love, one Georgia summer.
Stuck like the dew of her legs,
like the brushing warmth of her breath that once
swept me into the blessing of her closeness.

This afternoon, talked to a friendly blonde
and wondered how her curls would wet
from Mediterranean water. Whether her breath
would brush or prickle my ambivalent cheek,
move my ambivalent heart.

Befriended a young musician on the bus ride
to the airport, heard in his slight lisp
his artistic dreaming, imagined what music
compels his eyelids to shut and shield him
from the carnivorous spoon-feeding.
He seemed to be wondering that, too.
Knew I was writing in my head.

A flight to home, delayed among fog
and a President’s presence.
A quiet meal, a chicken sandwich.
A golden ale and a sit at the bar
to rest my arms on the counter
like heavy soldiers, returning home.
Listening to the businessman yell
at the player who should have scored,
won the game.

Late at night, arrive home,
when nothing beautifully happens.
Can you believe? Tornados are sweeping
North Georgia. I can only see in my mind
empty pool water swirling.

I touch death
everywhere. It is
pleasant sometimes. It is shooting
upright stone forever
up. It is
cold metal blue, wind moving rushes,
holding on to a snag as smooth as couch
chamois. It is
feeling wooden table bones, random spontaneous
tapestries, my skin, your skin,
my clothes wet with substance,
drawn through mass downwards, on to
you.
I would let them go through me, if I
could, like smoke, like
talk, I feel
(deaf, mute) the smoke inside from
the drug inside. It would be outlawed
if they could
reach inside,
visible words of hair-lit thinness
on what is sought, reflections appearing on
the beyond side of ordinary surfaces,
tasting like
salmon. I saw the glinting
salmon meaning in a poem, Jorie. It was
like when the sun came out with her,
predictably, and I thought to trust it,
perhaps this once, for hurt can’t last
without the good also
lasting. Maybe I
just wasn’t listening right, this potential
human being, this possibility, this normal
occurrence, mundane, talked and
scribbled dismissively as a dejected
thought of dejection about dejection about
what it is
all about. Write it down,
it’s a crossword, long as the climbing
steps around the earth, senseless as
black.
white.

There could be much in nothing, but it’s
everywhere outside, and there are just a few
stars, really. The billions are
few
in the outward sinking sky.

See, I touch death, colorlessness,
everything, sitting on
ledges, feet dangling, today as yesterday
as tomorrow, trying to stop this thinking
habit, trying to be a Buddha about it, but the
wind is
cold
this time, and there are too many of you.
Maybe next time something will appear here,
in soaking colors and ever
pulsing acceptance, understanding

blood, moving,
living, meaning

from beyond here, tomorrow or yesterday,
but I hope today, before I am touched
by it, and realize

nothing.

Through silent aisles
I shake the titles that laugh with sickening wit.
I turn them quickly inside out, giving each no more
than ten seconds to steal my life.
This is because it is as if I already know,
like a toothless, condescending vagabond.

There are so many of them, I smile.
It seems I am looking for loose change.
Really, I am calling out, asking for
my sentence of inevitability.

What there is
is the silent peace of attempt around me.
Given in to, always, with familiar sting and sigh,
at once recognizable because I know not
where it comes from, nor where it goes.

Come look at me as I walk through the aisles.
You might see my attempt.

and after, the swallows
circling
more precise than 8 AM
which, on St. Johns, on
the fourth floor
is also
a back and forth
upon a razor-edged
haze

No. I write against.
(Aihmeanlike, against it.)
No, against it.
Like this.
[The point is pressing
A dark circle down down down.]

So (Djiuknowhatuhmean?)
I clash on this. After doing that
All day, on air! With conscious
Breath, (which is just force myself
Breath!) out of the glued muck
Moss in my sere bellum. My
Me do lah. Oblong god. Duh.

How long, these fractured
seams of seemlessness around?

In the meantime, here’s
some words, an image of a
Stream, and I’ll say: “Like a dead
Man(’s passing.)” Look at it.
And you thought infinity
Could be brushed off like a fly!
Wring your wet sloppy self!
Undried, then sundried!
Well. Now, you are one-eyed.

But what about that cry
Of true voice swishing lost
And found in the growing
Concrescent infundibular
Abyss?

Oh, that might be the Sublime
Sadness! (That one mentioned
once.) Keeping the Eternal
Walker out in the dwindling
Afternoons, closer than tears
To littered ponds of cold light.

Will he pull out the solidified
Spirit, or precipitate his freedom
As indistinguishable from the
Mystery? Oh. Please. Then the
Self would be (the question).
And there. Would be. No.
Need for the asked king.