The sea stretches tight on a slight, white horizon
unflurried by waves, by the clean, boneache moon.
The water rests awhile, passing slowly through the ribs of continents,
its deep, deep chest booming with the cries of extinct fish.

I am not dead, though the salt has lifted me out
and away, its sting green-silver like a safety razor edge.
It rubs away chromosomes, the earliest layers of skin
and remakes me pale and raw as a baby’s spleen.

The land abandons me. The last little fishing vessel
returns to its village, bearing upon its sun-slick floor
the heft of my cells, my tiny stillborn children.
I know I’ll never be a mother;

the salinity of my blood has risen steadily
these past million years;
it itches against my arteries
and calcifies in the deeper pockets of my lungs.

I tower over grassroots, vivid as a corpuscle,
drinking from the local well and dreaming of lysis.

Lysis
As in glycolysis, bacteriolysis, analysis
To break into significant pieces
Bite-sized, easy consumption
To free
To see the fruits of your labor in front of you clearly
Like a jagged piece of glass, where
The edges are not warped and deceiving as it would be
If it were a smooth and rounded thing

Lysis-
What I know
Life is hard to swallow but
It is better that way

To the far reach
where the soul is frozen
and the sun doesn’t know
a rise from a fall
dark nights are unsettling
and the silence is cold

but the sun doesn't know
what the sun doesn't know.

Borealis burns
to thaw out a feeling
and you ride with the flow
on a southerly heading
as the sun stays low
beneath a fire-kissed sky

and you ride the flow
to ride with the flow.

Till warm sea winds
and calm sets you down
as the rain settles in
with a comforting sound
evening will fall
on Bocas del Toro

as the rain settles in,
as the rain settles in.

r ~ 7/11/14

There are wilted flowers on the
windowsill, their vase small and
cracked, the water long since
evaporated.

The wallpaper is faded and
torn, long strips of it
hanging down like
decaying leaves.

She looks up from
her notebook at
a faint memory etched
upon her skin.

(yesterday)
there was a hollow in my bed,
shaped like you and
all the stories you used to tell.

i don’t know if
you were happy but
i think i was, then.

(today)
all that’s left is shards of glass and
promises whispered over the
blade of a knife and
the heat of your skin is
imprinted on mine

(tomorrow)
i’ll take out the trash and
strew the pieces of what i
have left and
blow delicate flowers of
lost dreams and cold ashes

(after?)
it’s supposed to hurt
i guess (i know)
and the punch line of
this joke is
[ silence ]

I cannot be curbed, I cannot be tamed,
I cannot adopt moderation, or restraint.
My appetites are rampant,
And my passions wreak havoc like a violent summer storm.
Do not try to temper my lusts, or divert my inclinations,
For you will fail.
I will not have it said, that I merely existed.
Life is delicious, love is everything,
Why would you seek, therefore, to dampen your desires?
There is much to adore, there is much to abhor,
And I would not have it any other way.

I know* she says what you aspire,
if I go earlier
not long will you wait
To find a new mate.

Surely not dear I reply
I too will die
and if not,
in that unbearable pain
will go insane.

I know better.

This morn only
saw my male budgie
cosying easily
to his new companion.

Can’t bear to be long

Forlorn!