You will not tame this sea
either by humility or rapture.
But you can laugh
in its face.

Laughter
was invented by those
who live briefly
as a burst of laughter.

The eternal sea
will never learn to laugh.

As a child
I put my finger in the fire  
to become
a saint.

As a teenager
every day I would knock my head against the wall.

As a young girl
I went out through a window of a garret  
to the roof
in order to jump.

As a woman
I had lice all over my body.
They cracked when I was ironing my sweater.

I waited sixty minutes  
to be executed.
I was hungry for six years.

Then I bore a child,  
they were carving me  
without putting me to sleep.

Then a thunderbolt killed me
three times and I had to rise from the dead three times  
without anyone’s help.

Now I am resting
after three resurrections.

I want to light a fire inside you
To stoke your flames
And make your body melt
I want to see your eyes ablaze
To feel the smoke
Rise off your body
I want you to beg me to
Satisfy this unbearable heat
I want to bring you to a boil
And breathe in the steam that you gasp out
I want to burn my fingers when I touch you
As I make your temperature soar higher
I want to scald my tongue when I taste you
And when you burn out beautifully
I want to cradle your glowing embers
And keep you warm
For next time

In 1973,
My father used a favorite shucking knife,
Its short blade loose in the wooden shaft,
To pry open rocklike oysters.

He passed them to us, his heirs
To the iced tea spoons, the fondue ***,
The escargot shells, the silver martini shaker,
And we would first check them for pearls

And then hold them, like religion,
Above our mouths,
Tip our heads back,
And let them slide over our tongues.

Yesterday, at Little Pond,
As March thawed the glassthin ice,
I startled at the cracking,
Welcomed the blade, sang the amen.

chase the dream? or does the dream chase you
will i ever clean up this spilled ink,
or this messy ******* room?
all these unknotted strands of excess
stressed by lessons in having less
and not caring when it’s left
i don't care what is left

let me undress and leave my jacket
for someone else who needs to have it
i have enough to take this test
everyone survives their own sadness
in order to progress
i can share

and it smells like you’ve
been ******* someone else
but today, i don’t really care
or think that it’s my fault
and i think you can tell
the world is too big and too small
for those thoughts to manifest themselves
to fall into the small of my back
no more carrying rocks around in my backpack
the wealth of having nothing is the unrobbable stolen eyes
the stealth of the wise, being whole with parts,
it's the holy art of being too tired for lying to self
i guess jadedness is a start
but i'm looking for something else

options options options keep making me stumble on
and today the wind said no one ever listens him out
when he speaks for too long
and today the earth said no one cares
about her body heaving through each breath of this song
and yesterday i understood them but now
something is off kilter, something is wrong

i can feel when they cease to breathe
just like us when we sit in public places
hostile when someone gets in our space and
braced for impact, so enraged by this stranger
pull away, pull yourself up
she's about to go, so much love
how could we lose it all
in the flood of manmade lakes
the depths all caked in mud
like the inside of our stomachs
did you not notice what was at stake?

but now she is demanding a toll
for our rubble, so let's clean up the blood
the sky is chaotic and exotic
let everything love everything for once
this spoiled patch of stumps
is all we have left
so let's sit in the warm sun
pull our ringed fingertips up
to touch the clouds as they run
away from us again

the wasps caught in the cusp of our lungs
squirming towards our fleshy throats
that book i never wrote
it was a ******* masterpiece
the scars i stole
hurt like a headache in my hands
and where again do i find the right spot to sit
where is safest to land
and when do i know it’s the time to leave
i will wait, i will create, abate hate with silence
until she comes to, and cries, don't you see
it's time, and have you done everything you could
and then whispers
and if you didn't, would you

would you return and rewind to where it begun
grow up learn a trade, and marry a man, and have a son
or run to the apple orchard, and dance with someone
and touch the bottom of the pond
when it is at it's stillest and then wonder
will it ever be possible without ripples
and how many of these lakes are human limits
with potential unsung
barely digging into the bedrock soil

have you learned to love everything yet
and accept what you do not know
instead of seeing each error as a small death
each progression as an excuse to grow
and grow and grow

life isn't a saying
there is no chasing involved
there is only you and gravity and resolve

i don't think that you know
what privacy means to me
i'm staying drunk in the quiet
of my safe liturgy

of thoughts because concepts
are honest and curious
they aren't gonna judge me
and that's what i need
some company with peace

but inside them i'm violent
i'm rough to the touch
i try to be silent
so i'm not caught searching
the corners for love

when every house party is about
"that idiot who said" or her "stupid makeup"
so i'm not sure where i expect to find
any sort of understanding
in these social engagements
i don't see meaning in
ripping down others just for being
in the same room as you
and minding their own business
it always makes me uncomfortable
i don't see the usefulness knowing it's
easier to call someone else useless
when you feel so

and draw your own conclusions
than admit you don't really know
it's easier to stab the surface
than to learn someone's breathing well enough
to understand the way their blood flows
it's easier to make a snarky comment on their clothes
than to sit down and get to know them

so admit it
our darkness thrives on judgement
and you will feel so much better
because once you let go of them
emotions flow through you like weather
extend your arms for once
and realize that every single person you know
knows something you don't understand yet
instead of barraging them with
the ways you wish you were better

you thought i was going
to say they weren't you

because everyone's partial
to weak knees and weak ankles
it's easier to strike the person
who opens their arms to you
even once is enough
to break them because you justify
they allow themselves to be
so breakable

and though i feel these things to be true in my gut
and want to validate every single person
i can see needs the love
i'm in need of my own breed of saving
and i'm sick of this negative engaging

i just don't have any more chances
to be so kind
as to offer you
a target

you came to me drunk and looking for love
when before it seemed i had plenty of
suddenly my eyes must have been
mazelike and empty
it falls out of me
so neat and yet so unkemptly
all these bodies in storage
and the coroner sent me
but i can't clean up this mess
i'm only good at disassembly

you cupped my chin in your hands
and begged me tell me what you're thinking
i told you i was staring at the wall
with that smile quickly shrinking
too fast for you to catch it
i felt your breath kiss my neck
as you tried a different approach
with a more subtle effect
i should have explained i need a while
to think before i talk about these things

My memere liked the smell of gasoline, i do too
the tiny shreds of dying nice and slow it pulls from inside of you
and stale cigarettes in mom and pop drugstores
and burying the dead birds, saying it was just time for them to go
explaining that they don't realize they are killing themselves
every time they slam into the glass doors
she loved the seashells welling up from the atlantic
and the waves that held me detained
when she disappeared from shore
the glass that cut, that taste of blood
the stillness of death and linoleum floors and the whining dog
i couldn't fathom how they could all remain

her still skin was first time i noticed
the shifting quality of epidermises cusps so waterlogged
like lotus leaves and flaking logs of driftwood in the ocean
the way it's currents pushed and pulled everything above and below our bodies'
disturbances and submersions of purple i didn't love
i wondered why our bodies couldn't just come back to us
couldn't learn to rigor mort this
still deaths leaves me feeling purposeless
waxy and elastic, with small hairs like the cactus on the windowsill
she said so but i can't convince myself that this is a beautiful thing

when i was young i dreamt of falling down the wooden rungs
of our staircase, screaming in pain in the airway and waiting to be saved
it felt so real, and days later we were pulling over on the side of the highway
when we got the call, saying no one was there when she had the fall
when i saw the sunset from the beach for the first time in years
that night i cried for the beauty and
washed off the tears, purple and red clouds
salt water and tender sounds
and stared for a long time
at the empty shell of a horseshoe crab
did not eat the poison berries
removed the glass from my feet
set down the photographs in defeat
sat and read the dusty books
still caked in her fingerprints
sitting on the shelves of the library

and he never liked gasoline
he always liked fresh air and talkative people
the little things, and the adrenaline of strings
the 4 am sunrise over town center's church steeple
i was terrified of loving this good person
this aversion confuses me,
i teeth at these pseudonyms for something so real
being turned into something transient
i can't explain it i just hate dominance
and love hurt children

i still see his face like it was yesterday
saying that it was his birthday, and he was smiling
about going to the lake
i still can't retrieve a single date
last year from the months of august to may
i just remember the pictures and google pages
i would read 1 through 25 internally enraged
by this rememberance of you
my fists clenched in a faded grip
feeling the searing headlines
cutting through the blackness
i forget what it's like
not to lose it all every time
i close my eyelids
and the waves i love creep in and rip
i've just conceptualized it to be a pattern
and accepted it

They tell me to stop remembering
But they don’t understand with
Each blow life hands me
Another is already sewn
Into my ribcage, bruises in each hand
between each crescent bone,
this isn’t a coincidence
Most nights i hang my lungs
Dangling from my spine
Watching the walls cave in
the sticky residue of surgical tape
Strapped around my bicep
Will not wash off in the shower and then
This guilt will not wash off in the shower
and then, you are a burden, hidden
In the paperwork, between the lines
Three weeks later and there is still
Traces of it on me
Parts of me trapped in glass vials
i wonder what people thought
when they saw me in that blue robe
on the bed in the little blue room
I still remember how thick the
needle was
I was never scared of them
until now

i trick people when i feel like
i'm not seeing at all
i'm just feeling, not healing
with these words
that's my downfall
i wish i could give more
but this is all i have left
if i can't keep it locked in closet doors
i know the effect with be my last theft
don't force it out of me
just let the drainage catch your crests
let it come in time
when i feel safe knowing you
would catch my conjested confessions
and lay them to rest