below the eyelid-waves,
another iridescence grows.
currents blur the view in pentacles of light
to rhythms of the waning breath
--warping what an artist's vision yields,
the canvas of the mind stretched taut
in hues to coalesce the old and new,
absorb the intertidal volumes
with keener intake,
firmest diaphram to lift the pressure out
and sink into pelagic origins finally,
imbue myself poseidonal,
renew the birth of "love"

i am soaking with it,
open mouthed my cry is swallowed by the sea
i am a kracken echinoidea
******* up the floor
of life exchanging me with joy--
of jellyfish and snail,
burrowed shrimp, eyeful gobies,
clowns in their anemones--
my spires swirling clouds of green
to carpet spotted sky with verdant wake
and springing there,
from crest to crest,
a body undulating foam, it rolls voluptuous to swell
the bioluminescent instant... taken in the vast, full span of time...
to see her born here,
'mid dolphin song and symbol crash of tide
protuberance of shore awash in seeming pleasure of the rhythmic act--
alive the goddess comes, into her flesh--
to widen eyes,
re-establish channels to the heart
as if an aperture of cloud
were opening again,
to end an ancient overcast
and usher down to earth
the lance of starlight that would reach beyond the wrecks of ocean depth...

so too her visage strikes the darker corners of the heart
illumes all buried hopes
of bottom dwelling wretchedness,
and draws the tide above the line,
littoral tresses falling,
steep in pools calcareous and algal
worlds remaking worlds within the contours sexing there
imagined limestone in your many perfect forms,
marble softness swimming in my eyes
awaken appetites of newfound youth again.
the ochre lines that stripe along your curves
let hidden ripeness waft across my passion-eye
and with the grassy dunes i lie, doze in wrack at once--
as arches of my sight are pierced with rays of inner sun
my seabreath muse purveys, inhaled;
i would see you as you are entirely,
disperse myself into aesthetic mist,
become the spray on coastal loam
a sundog floating in and out of forms
become your mullusk lust;
sipuncula embrace of benthic dust
and slip along the textures
of your progenation's flood--
emerge as one and many lives
becoming me, this vision
in your suds, your divination's scree
--the salty rooting of the coastal trees,
the sand, the wave and moon
upon the dancing kelp forestal out at sea...
shining in the winking foam and symbiota sand.
crevice and the length of dyads simulating one,
phallus, *****, and none--
egg and **** bed..
diatoms  flourishing  again...
in you i am the ****** my own gestation obviates
i am effluxion of all lives in balance
on an ever-swaying crestline of irruptive suds--
diaphanous array upon your porous *****'s heave
weaving in and out, continuing to blur
in riven sight and empty heart to fill
the blood containing rapid urgency
to feed, to taste and seek its nourish-all
when after having given up the possibilities of love
and having worn the incompleteness raw,
the obverse affirmation cracks the sky...
at last they burst surreal into the now
and lacking practice courting glory
stumble over habits long attuned to falsities unveiled
and drawn into your undertow,
all cravings wrung into the novelty of merging without end--
arrive, horizonal, and echo from the dawn of being more than one




.

~
Sheltered within her cryochamber, the offspring of Armageddon dreams of play. She swims in an algal bloom that no longer stings like jellyfish. She floats on the surface of content, far removed from the synthetic sea and its plastic isles. She dwells in a bubble, but her mind hangs free as a halo, soaring with clouds. But these are not the skies that sense their own act of vandalism. This is the space and ceiling of a child's mind, in her capacity to absorb disturbance and rest her tiny, fragile hope in pretended, unclaimed worlds.
~

On the surface of her eyes,
An algal pool in full bloom.
He wades in with his lashes, caught,
Stumbles around in the fishing nets
Soaked to the knee.

The place in which the oxygen should be
Is choked up now, perplexed, verdant,
A floating city of jealous skirts
Buffeted by a harsh March wind...

And further down, he has her pinned
Tracing paths in shallow waters
Close yet distant to seashell ears
Roughening the lilypad surface
With a single feather.

Through algal bloom, she wonders whether
He'll bother wading down to meet
The covert Atlantis beneath his feet.

On a certain July, she found a new home,
Unused to the idea of openness,
An open terrace called her towards itself.
She was nine back then,
And the terrace was bright of sun,
For a long long time.

The terrace overlooked the horizon,
The clouds would merge and submerge,
Forming unadulterated child’s dream,
An imagination growing in itself.

She is seventeen now
She came to the terrace,
And closed herself to the sky-
It helped her, the tears of her first breakup;
She took out a cigarette and smiled her first,
The clouds were of smoke,
And the terrace took away her sorrow

She is twenty five now,
Cigarette butts have cornered their way,
Her father had arranged her marriage,
She didn't know him -
She didn't want to.
That day, amusingly, she didn't cry.
The tears wouldn't come.

Assemblage of marriage went through her home.
Her home wasn't her anymore;
A new family awaited her existence.
She couldn't go to the terrace that day,
And someone locked it inside out,
That night, the terrace flooded with rain,
For a long long time.

Nobody busted the terrace anymore,
The old man had arthritis,
And his wife had passed away.
Clouds still merged and birds still flocked,
It was closed for years.
A taller building got made, it obstructed the horizon.
Now its horizon overlooked windows of nothingness.

Algal invasion and cracked corners,
Weren't taken care of,
Wasteland of wasted memories;
The terrace was of no use now-
A girl who used to run, a teen who used to weep,
A woman, left it all behind.

The old man died, and the house was sold,
The tall building wouldn't let the sun come,
And the terrace turned dark,
For a long long time.

Maybe a girl would run again,
The lock was getting rusty;
Maybe the shade would light up open,
Maybe the life would take a toll,
And the rain and sun would come again,
Maybe her sorrow will  make its way?

The wet lichen
and I
sit upon the dew-slicked
outcrop of boulder bits -
both preternaturally verdure

Each seeking solace in the
space
each seeking what we need from
air
Inclined to commune here, both
'til
the sunrays fade-
my companion soaking sun from
without
and I, I seek a subtler, silent
inner light

We two ourselves
had thought perhaps
to sitstill alone
here
And having found (of course,
of course) a fellow
sit-seeker here
changed course (of course)
and sat astride this
same (but not for long,
only for long) stone

What'd've been an I
(grumble,sigh)
was now a we you see
and I, as well was never
only I but, rather I
as I'd not yet known
and my body and its songs

The lichen too
composed
of two
sat as seeming One
but was as much
a fibrous mesh of fungal
strands sit-seeking
along with its
(not hosted but self-same self)
algal (not plant, not animal; not
either, not both) or cyanobacterial
bits of cells and life material

So together, apart and as much
as One
we looked down
in late-October dawn
into the pond
(to see the sun's rise and blush)
and each and both of us
hoped then to find and feel our Light

Then, through the rising
warm mists,
I sought the Sky -
cloud-filled with cattails’ tufts
and there at last
(of course)
through the irreal fog
(annihilated obnubilation)
I saw the fog
and clouds as One

We two, too
were One.

Reticulate my mistakes
Entwine me in the filaments
Of one billion years of algal growth
And allow me to explode into
revered ******* nostalgic bloom
So I may feel once more
The fossilized whispers of love
On my petrified wooden ears
Smooth down my hair so that
I may lie beside you like a guilty dog
Incapable of culpable tears
Just the fear of
Our sound raves refracting
Like shattered light
Into the pedantic lexicon of lives
Leaving this world
Thousands per minute
But still your sweet
Sweet moss on my grave.

We strolled through converging pathways spilling with synchronized chaos, finding our own space amidst the rumpus of the crowds on a small hill overlooking an endearing muddle of humanity. The grass was wet with evening dew and we were colored with the aureate light of dusk, watching everything swim by with novel delight. The city erupted before us, vibrant, apathetic, and amoral and we swelled with its magnitude. Round and enchanted, we rolled down the hill and fell into the peculiar happenings encapsulated in the windows.
We stood before a man with no eyes and worms coming out of his fingertips in a room with no floor. He smiled at us, carious teeth bending into slight parabolas under the pressure of its sweetness. We excused ourselves quickly, escaping into a opaline kaleidoscope that had opened up before us. I could taste all the lives we tumbled past as a mix of bitter almonds and grapefruit with the occasional shock of decomposing fish heads.
We squeezed our bodies into the melody of a madrigal sung by a girl with four heads and sonorous hands to find ourselves in the rafters of an old cathedral. Below us contorted souls filed into wooden confessionals screaming sins of their fathers into the ear of a deaf priest who gave copacetic blessings in the form of an orange pill bottle. Distended and bruised, we fell from the ceiling into the baptismal font. Bioluminescent algal blooms effloresce above our heads and resplendent stingrays whisked by, casting soft, amorphous shadows across our cheeks. Lulled by the etherial tenderness of the liminal world, we fell asleep with your hand on my neck and my fingers tangled in your seaweed hair.
We awoke to the sound of falling peaches and splitting skin. I pulled a small fish out from behind your ear and inhaled the brine of your tongue before stepping into the open window beneath your pinkie finger. A man in a suit who was really a box jellyfish greeted me in the center of a opulent office building that had no purpose. I politely declined to shake his hand and instead lost myself in the map of the city unfurled beneath the wall of glass in front of me. I pulled a small seashell out of my pocket and threw it. Everything shattered.
I felt you next to me, falling through space and low-lying clouds to find ourselves in the present.
We are saturated colors of mustard, earthen green, and midnight blue sprawled on sloping grass without hesitation. Buoyant and expectant, we meander through song and chatter to find ourselves bright and shining on a warm green bench talking in improvised harmony. Our skin is a new composition of window light, yellow and breathing. A synthesis of memories pool and flush our cheeks with affection and we inhale the world. Flags pirouette and fall, a refracted constellation glimmers on glass, and you taste like honey and rich smoke. The moon is ebullient, so full and round that in a gasp I pluck it from the sky and place it in your shirt pocket. We’re effervescent, with giggling fingertips on a euphoric investigation into novelty of human sensation. Somnolent and gentle, we fall asleep with the memory of our water soaked bodies burgeoning under softened hands.

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.

Lips split
To lick and swallow sallow tears.
Heartbeat in ears, I
Choke down my words
To sit through my fears.

My brain is electrified with the acridity of lemons –
Dashing through cemeteries
Fumbling with etched wisdom
On stones older than enlightenment
And smearing it with fingers trembling on my forehead,
Clammy and numb
While mouths split and shriek into the paralysis of dreams shattered.

I am
hooked on sadists and social delinquents
Lost swirled in the lotus of stinking nightfall,
Gliding through clouds of memory lost and memory found,
With
Jugular arched bare smooth desperate for sunray.
Impassioned strings of rhapsodies intertwine my fingers for
A raptured fractured moment, but
Still I am zygotic, weeping in the embryonic stuff of life.

But reticulate my mistakes -  
Entwine me in the filaments
Of one billion years of algal growth
And allow me to explode into
revered ******* nostalgic bloom
So I may feel once more
The fossilized whispers of love
On my petrified wooden ears
Smooth down my hair so that
I may lie beside you like a guilty dog
Incapable of culpable tears
Just the fear of
Our sound raves refracting
Like shattered light
Into the pedantic lexicon of lives
Leaving this world
Thousands per minute
But still your sweet
Sweet moss on my grave.

In that algal bloom marshland
Lived a frog with his wife once
Feeding his wife every day
The frog was now tired and tedious
"Oh! My beloved, I can't feed you much
For I'm already old and broken"
His beloved was no longer in delight
As she was in a frenzy of fright
"We can't leave our birthplace
We're not in a great haste
Let us gobble up anything
A twig, a bug or a little fish
Let's settle up our lives
For we have to thrive"
Slowly and steadily
The marsh was empty
All it own was dump like a bin
No pathogens, no bug, no fish
Except two souls counting days till death
As they worked hard with their breath
The marshland was now the property
Of a government official at duty
He called for drainage cleaners
To build there shopping centres
To disappear the marshland
In the crystals of water vapour
As workers dug deep inner
All they unearthed was algae
Nothing more than that
Nothing less than this..

Sneaking smoking into diseased lungs on wet lonely spring nights
Jumping! Free falling,
Heart in stomach
Twitching in sleep as birds begin to sing
And strictly internal weeping
On trails less travelled.

Thusly, I am
Cold like asteroids
and
out of orbit

Chardonnay until
I can reject reality
Sleeping naked sweating shivering
And teeth grinding into
My tree trunk soul


I will see you
one day
Worse for the wear and tattered
And I will be caulked and
stuffed like dead dreams

But with you,
I want
to curl inside your decaying cavities
And breathe smoke out of my own coughing lungs
to smooth you to sleep

Your head on my hipbone
Is time blinking her eyes
in a seismic convulsion –
The outlier of our data
and
we have finished before we’ve begun

Despite the marrow in our bones surging in the tide to

one another ourselves

Moss could grow on our interlacing fingers
And have more intention
than we,
Skulls and vertebrae
Click-clacking off beat
To the tune of no drum

Algal lined membranes
effloresce and become
rainforests of decay and renewal

drip dripping on the tip of my tongue

parasitic
poached goats
are not for
petting zoos
but that has never
stopped them
before

and of course
there’s cream
in a little hollow
place tucked
so very deep
inside them
(almost like custard I’d wager)

they know
all about
the lobster
and how she prefers
to lay her
eggs in a
tight cluster
all grape-like
on the
underside of the
algal frond

where I dream
that we too
might someday
find cool shelter
from the plastic bits
that rain down from
the tortured sky
the 3-D printers
that spit
out pink toes
and little
baby corn
holders

WHERE CAN I FIND SUCH A LIFE?
I feel so lonely when l'm far from You,
a fish that gasps to see the river's depth
to stop for long nearby some stony ground
to kiss an algal spot for food and breath.

It has no other way to fill its gills
with what supplies its blood with needed air,
no food to hush the stomach rumbling sound
save in the water with its matchless cure.

Where can l find the love that sates my soul,
but in Your words that wash away my grief.
You give my soul a rush of joy so fresh
which gives me all the hope that grants me life.
BY JOSEPH ZENIEH
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
____________