Dreamt of being awash in arms
that were neither mine nor
belonged to mine
But that slid behind me
as a pulsing, licentious
sea mine

Am I sea glass?

Am I a wishy-washy shellfish
On any masculine sea-floor?

Am I silly ocean foam?

In a spot where my left eye
should see clearly is
a new eye
a new bright pool
reflecting my sleeping and
blinking to teach how algae
roots in still waters

At night while you sleep, I carve out
spoonfuls of gut, and wax and polish and buff
and replace it with stitches so fine
you can't discern the old scars from new.

I'm just a granite slab of a statue
I have moss on my calves and on my back
because I am facing South, towards
the far-off sea;
but even this is wrong.
Break my fingers,
Break my knees inwards
so that I come heavy to the forest floor
scattering into my many earthen pieces,
into my many girlish sighs,
every quiet sadness, every unrequited torment
slipping from my gut
like wet intestines.
Every tucked away breath spilling through my lips
as I lay my face cold to the soil
as I have so many nights to your shoulder.

It was a warm night in Madrid,
when I met her.
She rounded the corner like a siren would the sea,
dripping and demanding
her legs long, level and silk
with hips like two half moons
sauntering in a way
only gypsies know.
Her fingers danced delicate ballets
and from the nail beds
poured boiled sugar, coiling the length of my spine.
Burnt cream in colour
like her body, her demeanor,
dark, wild hair framing darker, wilder eyes
hooded Venus orbs.
Her *** candied meteorites on my lip.

I want to be the stones to your riverbed,
pipeclayed satellites
so that you move forever about my body
and I sturdy along the soft banks of your heart.

And to the softer parts,
to the dunes worn by rushing water and starfish,
sulking and easing their way under your skin,
as they do,
to those submerged shores
I want to knead,
smoothing over every inch of you
until you forget how heavy debris can settle.

Over the cliff of our bed
I am a waterfall.
My backbone curls into rainbows,
my fingers are little pink salmon mating in the spray.
Your shoulder is my shoal
onto which I am unsheathing black-sand claws;
a lazy gull stretching the winter from her wings.