Hold my hand, he said when the waves got big
The current took him instead

Oizys, son
From behind the leaves, I saw you, trembling
In your presence, your power strengthening
In the empty, midnight parking lot
While the street lights hummed
And moths danced around your illuminated frame
You turned slowly, onyx eyes of shame
And dirtied bare feet, male hair long and white
The street lights flickered when you blinked and cried bitterly
And I saw, for my first time, the eyes of Misery

Achyls, daughter
You were in an empty field
No premonitions did you wield
An ancient silo in the distance
Leaning over a chasm black lamb
Dark skinned, dressed in black robes
With tribal painted face
Digging earthen fingers into its black lace
When you looked up, I saw your cloudy eyes
Churning of a storm, cataract yet wise
Your lamb had absent vapored eyeballs
The Mist of Death made my skin crawl

Hypnos, son
Secluded in a cave by the sea
A silent, empty place to be
While gray waves crash into jetties
The clouds gather in the distance
Poppies at the mouth changing time in an instance
I go in your palace and rub my cold skin
For pulsing blue glows from deeper within
You, a lanky youth, with thick brown hair and heavy eyes
Sit there with a paper mask
Illuminated by the penetrating glow
In the center, surrounded by whale bones
Humming a song I remember fondly
You trapped me in your Dreams, singing lullabies softly

Eris, daughter
Violates a bedroom with utmost hate
There are paintings of kings and statues of satyrs
Pillows of silk and animals on the walls
Usurping the gold clawed palace
Silent but kicking and throwing with malice
With black skin covered in a chalky white substance
I peek through the crack in the mansion’s door
Lips formed in a silent shout, you notice my presence
Naked and bruised and plagued with no voice
Suddenly stops and lays against a ****** wall
Through your electric black hair
And fiery red stare
I witness a Child of Spite
Woman of Strife

Nyx, mother
I am a crawling shadow of trees
And wicked heart of night
I am the wax on the cold leaves
And the glow of the moon’s light

Slabs of purple granite
sink into to the sea
marking the way
into the bay

Long rolling waves
raise and lower
all of the boats
anchored afloat

Dolphins patrol near by
as the ladyfish jump
the pelicans and other birds fly
looking for fish from the sky

We sink live shrimp
or chunks of cut bait
waiting for a bite
for a moment, all with the world is right

And the ships were fogbound for three days
Their hulls split smiling wide by the spray of the channel
We're hovering with them in the dimness of a drunk sun crawling under
A dusk devoid of color
Welcome rainclouds follow countless bouts of bleakness
Slate-gray miasma of refinery exhaust swirls
Mingling skyward with the overcast scene and all it's gulls and cranes
Cawing in the dampness toward their roosts under jetties
Those frayed hurricane tarps on dilapidated rooftops
Laid creased and faded by morose Texas suns
Epitaphs blotting dismal landscapes of copper and olive
And smashed concrete begging to be reclaimed by nature
As all of it is when the seasons heave
Our interim footnotes disguised by the power of purpose
The notion that one day our role will be to make life better for each other
(Oh, how we loathe being found out)
Instead of grimacing, sage-like, naked and angelic in our blindness by the mirror
While each shred of truth oscillates into blue ruin and we shake, shake, shake
Mesmerized by houses where we once lived and stories we must have led in them
In varied and skewed alternate realities, and in dreams we once had
Some of which paint homage to our own grim summers here
Some in which where my roads leading home were less obfuscated
Instead being laid out like the chemtrail creases drawn solemn on our brows
(We won't notice them until our thirties)
This far south, everything is the ageless vacuum we've known since conception
Thusly we're bound to the irony of it all by dull tradition and the will to break it
Among all other shams bred real by the ambitions of confused white men
Their warring remains reigning evident within my crooked heart
Under whichever corner of earthen floor it may be buried
Your guess is as good as anyone's

My love, you are an ocean.
Your arms are jetties, reaching out into the water, encompassing fish and seaweed.
Your fisherman's hands bear a deep roughness, rivaling sand across my untouched skin.
Their scratching surface rubs me raw, chaps my lips and splits them.
You drink the blood.

My life has been hazy until you.
Now it is overcast with fear and timing.
Inside you, a bomb sits, multiplying, increasing.
You pump manufactured time in through those arms I crave so much.
There is nothing I can do to help you.

Instead, I watch shoals swim by, each holding a piece of you.
So desperately I want to scoop them up, and rip their bellies open,
Marvel at their ribs, but not stop until I've ripped them
Skull to fin, and found your ink scrawled along their spines.

To call myself drift wood would be an insult to you.
Your past lovers' eyes shine like sea glass.
In time, and in you, they've become softened chunks of green, brown, and blue,
Shimmering across your hands. Across your chest, they gather.
Their brightness shows in your wrinkled eyes.

How I have come to love the etched time across your face.
Each inch something new I am discovering, yet discovered
In dives and ships alike. Maturity gathered and processed from
Nails and knuckles.  Ugly shoes, and screaming babies throwing salt across you.

Cracks run about your legs. You shake. You become
Stable; secure; sturdy.
Drag my body down. I want to flit under your surface, and gasp
Without breath, at the vast depth of you.

St. Andrews Bay has left a mark on me , where jetties battle sea
Summer storm , distant , courtesy of afternoon breeze.
Thunderheads cool white sand  , wash , clean  and renew thoughts better left to antiquity ......Orange sky ...Lightning , where gulf and sky meet.........

Boat hooked up
Let'***** the road
Left work early
Lighten my load

Buddies jump in
With their gear
Truck loaded down
Have no fear

Rods and reels
And bottles of crown
Headed to the coast
Jamming throwback sounds

Dinner time
Whataburger stop
Back on the highway
Haven't seen a cop

Halfway there
Need to get some sleep
But stopping at a buddies
Conversation runs deep

Morning comes
Got to get going
The beach it calls
And the tide is flowing

Check into the house
Drop boats in the water
Let's go fish
Can't stand it ni longer

Live gulf shrimp
hooks and weights
Out to the jetties
To sink some bait

Tap and pull
Set the hook
Drag screaming
The bait was took

Finally turn
This big old red
Bringing him in
Feel just about dead

Scoop him up
32 incher in the net
The tone for the trip
Has been set

10 guys  here
For three more days
Fishing trip
Memories made

The all embracing
warmth of a coastal night
The heavy humidity
when love is no longer right
The water ripples restlessly
The tired slivered moon
has had enough
Goes on down without a goodnight

The hollow deck makes scuffing sounds
You stop but there are no other sounds
A disturbed bird flies  on by
Squawk ! letting you know
It disapproves of you being nye

An ancient breeze of feelings
ruffles your hair
string up the cares of
the yesterday's dawns
They were red flag warnings
but you sailed on  blissfully

You savor the ropes last release
Taking time to store the lost will
Cast off becomes a minimal thing
as you slip free of your mourning

There is a cast of grey across the sky
Dawn is coming pushing the winds
of freedom across the bay
You drop partial sail and
the ship responds
Making knots out of a knotty situation

You hear the bow slicing water
As you release all the canvass
Slipping past the jetties
on the falling tide
you sigh , a relief , a release
It's just you , the sea , and God

Good god son.
Looking straight at feet never got no one no where in this world
Son, can you imagine?
What it’s like to be passed over for shoe leather?
To have eyes, arms, legs, knees, all ignored?
Ignored for an inanimate object with a pleasant scent but nothing more
Salt water and leather.

Or son.
Can you begin to imagine what it’s like to melt?
What it’s like to fold in a too large chair
Staring straight ahead
At a screen
Flashing colors/lights
Sliding into and out of semblances and meanings
Hands searching and
not finding.

And son, your knees jutting out like jetties among the foam
Crossing right over left over left over right
Cool air lifting up hairs like shocks, but god son.
You must look at them.
And son could you ever imagine?
How deep a chair can feel
When you know the folding’s real
And the water isn’t still for any lack of menace
Oh god!
How the screams will peal.

But son, I hope you’ve guessed that from under the refracting and refracted water
That cuts the light up so beautifully
From under that water you’ll never see bottom.

And son, my love, this is vital
What they say about screams in space is true.

I know you’re a child, kid, but think, really think on this one,
How’s it got to taste?
Fed nothing
But expecting much
Can you conceive of the empty imperial dry rot
Upon which, believe this if anything, the sun never sets
And child, it tastes like carrion.
When the chair starts its own folding in.
Holy Lord in Heaven, my beloved son, when the sea foam green monoliths roll in with the moon.
They **** against the wood legs of the jetty
The feet, and knees too,
Those that are foundationed in the sand and bound up with the shoe leather
That you,
My ingrate son,
Cannot seem to ignore

I have been a victim
Spattered by the saline spray
Of tears
Breakers crashing
The roaring surf
Blood in my ears rushing
Unable to fill the chasm
When dreams hit reality
Frail hope shatters
Scattered like gulls in the wake
Of a squall line
That dichotomy of sand and sky
Boundaries blur
Jetties endure the burden
Of the coming storm
This relentless tide hammers fragile shores
Limited ability to absorb the fallout
I find myself washed out to sea
Carried away
Forever swimming parallel to safety
Facetious hope a contagion
So acceptable to take on water
The annealing of complacency and stubborn faith
Simply a tonic for fools
I will be a victim
No more
My eyes are dry
I am weathered but unbroken
No more dredging the bottom for broken bones
And abandoned dreams
My reality waits
For me to stop treading turbulent water
And simply ascend
TL Boehm
01/01/10
© 2010

MOTECUHZOMA
            Our priests have proven green and tenderfoot
            By goggling at our late, ill auguries:
            Dumbfounded, counselless, they scan their toes.
            For this have I agreed to pawn my pride
            In dabbling with questionable cures
            By calling forth the aid of sorcerers.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Dread lord, how might your grace with confidence
            Place mercenary warlocks in your trust,
            Who twist their gifts toward late-night banditry,
            It’s said, to paralyze their shaky preys.
            Tezcatlipoca, our capricious master,
            Might cloud our muddy minds yet murkier
            For slumping to such dubious helps as these
            If they make mock of his peculiar knowings.

TLACAELEL
            Don’t worry. If they cool your fevered fears
            We’ll hail their hocus-pocus as white physic.
            If not, then as black fiends in iron they’ll rot.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Bring in these esoteric ministers.

                                  A guard leads in three Sorcerers

            You three obscure and dicing conjurers:
            Have you beheld grim omens in the clouds,
            Or prodigies upon the earth? You three,
            Who fathom ‘neath earth’s black and gem-jammed caverns
            To skim atop cold pools of stone-blind fish
            And witness those who have not winked at day;
            Who sink into the water’s murky deeps,
            And loiter drowsily among the weeds,
            Mustering fronds and nightshades for your charms.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Have you encountered stray and mongreled men?
            Or lightless nooks congeal as dead men’s shades?
            Or midnight women, crablike, creep in broods?
            Shall we be leveled flat by strange disease,
            Or locusts, pirating their greedy shares?
            From sudden deaths, from wars or wild beasts?
            Shall rainstorms sink our rooftops down to jetties,
            And Tlaloc drown us in a tide of bounty,
            Or broil us in cruel sabbatical?

MOTECUHZOMA
            You must not candy up **** truth for me.
            Have you not heard our thirsting goddess cry,
            And nightly croaking from the earth’s deep faults?

Profanities,

declarations

bombastic, love/ hate sprayed, whatevers,
beer-stained brutalist underpass

the lake, a paper-mill, stink of pulp-steam,
dog-**** minefield ,fast-food cartons

park-and-riding, egg-fried verges
turgid outflow,

Down this squeezed tube,
of dead algorithm n' *****,
blue-green algea ,wetland gangrene,

come Nightingales..

Meliflous revelry,

distinctive dichotomy,

obvious opposite

oddity

Beneficent Mediterranean
medicine chugged via
secretive syrinx

sweet,

sweet

sweet unplugged jugular

thick cut clarity, every
note a pearl-dropped hope for muddled

ditches, creeks and jetties, broken
wings of football pitches

blood of oak and bluebell
soaking smoke above the muddied tracks

and clearing,

clearing all
before their song

At the equilibrium of land and wave
Along granite jetties in battle -
with the ebbed blue sea
Across the misted olive waterfall terminus
Basking in the glory of the Almighty
from Blueridge escarpments , creek narrow tower
and river divide* ....

danger on the rocks
in the tight jetties trying
to make a way to port
with one engine and water
swallowing
and I bailed one eye
to the shore and two on her *******
she was the bosses daughter
and well bred
a worthy mate
she heaved and hoed as I did
her bucket filled as mine was
throwing salty water over the port
bow with arms as smooth
as any sailor but no tattoos
until later
she had an anchor tattooed
on her , well keel,
when we made shore
and sank into the white beach
she said welcome aboard
and I took off my sea legs
and white sailors cap and saluted her,
gave an ahoy to all who could hear

Nothing lives well in between the lines
Too many rocks and not enough water
Exhaustion in the morning
Dropping the needle to play back time
Nobody understands what you mean
They cast shadows when the light is blinding

It’s a game for those who are young
Telling each other they’ll die for love
Now we try to live without it
We can’t cry without any tears
We can’t say bye to our fears
It’s more than we can ever admit

Walking the street or fast asleep
Loneliness wandering inside a dream
You have a promise to keep
All or nothing, all or nothing
The middle is just an empty street

How can you talk forever when you can see it
It’s not something you want to think about
So much time to make mistakes but no longer
Is it because it takes that long to see the world
Or to fix the things we know aren’t right
I could let you drive but I’m not a passenger

It’s like walking the same sandy shore
We love the gulls and the way the sand sinks
But the jetties loom where can’t cross
So the day ends and we go our separate ways
Until the morning where  shells are waiting
And I find a lucky sand dollar for you to toss

Walking the street or fast asleep
Loneliness waking up inside a dream
You have a promise to keep
All or nothing, all or nothing
In the middle there's nobody to meet

Plans have been made
Rooms have been booked
The boat is finally ready
Start tying on hooks

The guys are excited
Will see them all soon
Port O'Connor get ready
Were gonna fish your lagoon

Also your bays
And maybe your jetties
Maybe the surf
Flounder gigging, get ready

Some dim tide strode the beach pelican,
had quarters for eyes, and a gull's sense for scavenge.
I found pearls under the boardwalk,
but they were just butts
and hunks of abalone
caught up in the pushing.

The skeeball racked out addicts
like melamine and spent rubbers,
but we were young then,
not known for drinking.

Safari had fake skin in the flukes,
Zulu shields too tall for a penny,
and some chump carved out Jesus in sand,
but the waves whipped that away.

I got all surf rod crazy
and hooked a dogfish in the belly,
and some **** took my kite,
so that's what's up for fish.

Later on, though, when the acids came on,
and them jimmies were ants,
and that ******* carny wouldn't stop the ride,
and footprints became skulls,
and the sea turned opal,
and the horsecops stayed cool,
and I became dolphin,
and undertow spoke of passage,
and the horseshoe ***** washed up
gray and silent - I learned -
that mussels cling
to jetties not for communion,
but in the hope that the next sap
would take the pounding.

In the garden, people pick
plums and pears, they bake pies
from the bitter apples, they play lute and flute
in the old, old rose garden

On the stone, the light burns
the belly of the lamp, chock-full
of oil, is rubbed, I rake the paths
up to the jetties in the old, old star sea

A hedgehog rummages, centuries pass
children on the bench dangle their legs
and I rake the paths, the birds sing
the song of the beginning, the old, old song