lungs burn,
legs ache,
you know you need to breach
and yet
you linger,
pause;
anticipate
the veil within your reach.

it's not your turn
but here you are,
again
so deep beneath the world
alas,
the dizzy heights
of waters dark
expell you to the shore.

handfuls of hair,
toungues,
teeth.
the curving air;
alive
in rooms
with hanging doors.
we feast.

our rolling eyes,
shaking lips,
hips.
tremble
under fingertips,
taste the heat
and melt.

we press.
wasting no time
for breath.
it happens.
it happens.
it happens!

inhale
before you go
beneath, so that you might
not run out of your life - don't fade
away.

mermaid purses,
vales of kelp,
swinging skyward with the swell

of nautic rhythms
- submarine -
with incandescent, algal green.

in underworlds,
cathedrals blue,
we waltz in coral halls anew,

adorned in silks
of woven foam:
forgotten cold Atlantic home.

nothing scares me more than me.
it isn't fair,
it aches to be
so full of rancid misery;
twisted psychologically
by tempered hate
- a level stare -
emotion shreds that crackling coat
of grinning, laughing make-believe,
retouched,
refinished,
polished fine
by damaged days in infancy.
I want to love;
I long to breathe
and bare it all,
******* the need to look so in control.
please,
how long until I break, you think?
how long until they see?
those sorrows buried underneath.
nothing scares me more than me.

and nothing
- no -
can touch you here.
you need to know;
you want to hear.
lagoons of time
- pearlescent-
in all directions;
omnipresent.
we waste our tastes
in saline haste to swallow
something more than hate;
to anchor all,
to simulate;
the weight of tears
against the odds
of breath and flesh.
that safety net
defies the length of sentiment,
and even yet...
you hold yourself in present tense
to sweat,
resent,
repent.
and so,
you starve and fret.
in the dead of night
you petrify,
resist the air that rents
and gasp:
what was that?

all that you are;

is all that you?

this is all that,

and that is all.

hush,

hear it?
listen.

all those waves
rolling in,
out,

dragging all you hate,
all you fear,
in tides
offshore.

no pen can trace ink
faster than the sea
can wash it
all away,
promise.

your words are water,
dissolving in the saline sounds
of neap and spring,
rise and fall;
lunar rhythms.

eye the sky
and wait for everything,
the whole god ****** world
to take a breath
and quiet down

so you,
with shaking hands,
might find some peace
below the seabreeze scented winds.
just wait for it.

now,
a moment.
a cosmic pause,
and even nature waits
for what should happen next.

recede.
gradual fade
of throbbing veins,
and wet skin tingles

prickles
with delight
of marine air.

you
are safe;

free.

I can't pretend
that I don't care.
it hurts too much,
too much to bear,
to think of you
alone somewhere
without me there,
without me.

there.

[(this is not a poem)

this also not a poem]

this is a 'poem'

but that's just my opinion.

handfuls of hair,
toungues,
teeth.
the curving air;
alive
in rooms
with hanging doors.
we feast.

our rolling eyes,
shaking lips,
hips.
tremble
under fingertips,
taste the heat
and melt.

we press.
wasting no time
for breath.
it happens.
it happens.
it happens!

flashes in the dark.
matches scratch,
little fires arise.
bread browns,
fish sizzle,
the scent of coffee boiled in cans.

a clatter of knives,
tobacco clouds,
a lapping on the rocks.

before,
that vastness of sea.
behind,
the frozen wastes;
that barren of broken dreams.

they are so very far from home.

one stands,
watches,
points an arm toward the glow
of crimson afar.

they cross themselves,
ready the tackle
and stand,
knowing they may not return

but hunger is unkind,
and death makes no exceptions
for sailors.

his leather palms grip the line
as the tuna fights for life.
it sings in psalms,
stinging strong,
shining in his eyes.

what use have you for words, o' fish?
o' tyrant of the sea?
your royal hues
of palace blues
defy all eulogy.

that string of silver, slicing fast
across his arching back
rends slivers til
the swells go still
or coils run out of slack.

and when that sun, that burning eye
sinks beneath the waves,
your wild run
of songs unsung
sets memories ablaze.

at last you rest, o' king of kings,
and glide toward the sky.
your final test
at his behest;
he's weeping as you die.

I can taste the lines your body makes
as it glides over all;
the shape of you
adrift in reckless harmony
against the wind.

and here I lay,
lost among the swells as seabirds cry;
doubleyous through bubbled glass,
so high above us both.

what darkness finds us here?
what terror clings to shadows
beneath our backs?

none that cannot die;
that cannot fail.

rise, my love.
rise against the atmospheres and breathe.
cast down that pitiful tyranny of fear,
rend the loathesome toothed doom.

they cannot harm you here:
you are swifter than them all.

wait for me there.
I, too, will surface.

I see the dog among the stones,
the shape of bones
pressing at its skin.

the air is wet,
the silence met
by silence in return.

the greying dusk - all paper thin -
still smolders from the burn,
while fading embers dance within
the homes they overturned.

ahead, red eyes glare through the dark
as overhead, bulbs burn brighter than any star.
great wheels roll and rumble, beneath and behind
and the rattle and scrape of a hundred gears pulses away,
relentless; unaware and unmoved
by your restless writhing.

behind your eyes, that broken mind
and bleeding heart beat on and on
in stubborn time with some pretense of strength,
but that's gone too, you fear.

outside, the frozen tundra sifts
from white, to blue, to grey,
until the austere sky reflects
and swallows whole its solid self,
leaving wisps of winter dancing in its wake.

how long now til familiarity fades
and you might breathe some novel air and smile
at the shapes and sounds of things you've never seen?
those echoes everlasting might soon die,
if only you could feel some promise below your feet;
the world with all its weightlessness pushing back
from underneath.

there is a place by the sea
where unburdened timbers jut from the ground
in neat little rows;
blades of grass in a field of stone.
monuments of mothers, fathers, children, stand
all weathered by the salt and wind
and laced with wild roses.

silence, here, is holy,
broken only by the waves that wash the shore
and spray the air,
and fill the space with echoes.
gliding softly over all, from hill to hill
and back again, like all those happy voices did
so long ago, when I was young.

a ruined bed, two lovers lay,
outside, the first slow breath of day,

a song is sung - a bird, up high,
born years ago, somehow survived

the rip and tear of tooth and claw,
hatched from a nest that did not fall,

a slender limb that did not break
on sleeping earth that did not quake

grown old and tall and straight and wide,
a withered seed that never died,

blown from afar on autumn breeze,
stirred from the ground with careless ease,

a little boy raking the ground
looked to the sky, and heard the sound
of birds

I will be gone from this place before sunrise.
bone weary and moving fast,
burning memory with light.

those miles, hours, will pass
in a haze of disinterest.
forgotten.

but this?

eternal.
I stay, long after the rest have gone,
departed in the dying light.

lingering, pausing before that sky.
I will never watch the day end
from these shores again.

and now the night has fallen,
that void horizon navy cold.
and I turn.

breaking morning with the birds,
she glides beneath the rising sun,
a vapor trail of sweat and spent breath
drifting in her wake.

muscles taut, brow poised,
a stream of hair - airborne ribbons,
and stones shudder beneath her feet.

thundering along the hillside,
she beholds the world as it fades from grey
and the truth of things is shown
with the death of night.

another mile and she'll turn around,
set course for home,
return.

maybe.

she smiles.
nose pressed against my neck
as rain dives all around,
clapping the soil
with moisture;
filling our breaths
with the sweetness of spring.
I kiss her head as hair,
wild in wind,
envelopes my face.
I used to convince myself that
beauty and cruelty came only
as accomplices.
I was so wrong.
I love you, I whisper.
she smiles.

That curse,
your singing lathe of words
astounds all as you stand.

The light,
that graying, fading sight
betrays all you command.

needles scraping bone,
heel and sole.

sliding cold inside your boots
you bear the weight of all you love,
while inches underneath
the giant gods of other worlds relay
their shepard songs.

empty aqua loneliness.

they disappear,
soaring softly into darkness and
sinking,

willing,

deeper than the sky is wide.

their dreams are of a solid state;
the breath that leaves their backs a
force of nature,

strong enough to rent the field on which you stand that now,
to us,
seems still as stone.

pilgrims, nomads, sentinels against the fury of the coast:
backs bent sidelong,
straining, still,
they sway with loving ease under the eye of that relentless ghost.
the ocean draws its breath.

that salt-stained silhouette of shore under a frosted glow:
a mirror pool,
watchful gaze.
thunderclaps of memory accost the tidal mouths below.
she smiles in her sleep.

in dreams aquatic, giants, titans cry their hopes and fears alike:
the air collapses,
crystalline.
the column pauses, dreading, waiting in anticipation for the strike.
and yet, the dawn arrives.

oh, we watch those holes,
those wholesome moans.
the velvet breath.

we coalesce
we lift.
we drift.

rolling, washing through the grass.
the summer sun reflects
across our teeth.

the heat,
the breeze,
we float with ease
and rise to disappear.

oh, that frothing mist awaits:
that great blue orb of the sky