There’s a dark grotto
Under the sea
With shelves and shelves
Of bottles
Clear, glass bottles
All of my secrets

A carefully watched castle
The middle of a concentric series of impassable walls
Surrounded by a forest of kelp
With razor-sharp teeth
And then the narwhals
The narwhal guards
Armed to the teeth with halibut-slicing knives
Their three-meter horns
Gleaming in the moonlight
Guarding
All of my secrets

Skeletons, trespassers of yore,
Strewn about the seafloor
Bones picked clean
By the scavenging *****
No one can enter
No one can leave
The grotto with the shelves
Shelves and shelves of clear, glass bottles
All of my secrets

But as for the *****
For the first time in centuries
The sunlight warms the waters
Melts the kelp
Kisses the narwhals
Buries the bones and torments the scavengers
Clearing away the darkness
A nonstop route through the castle
Protecting
All of my secrets

The tendrils of photons creep along
Wary
Ready for a fight
The grotto growls menacingly
Unguarded
For the first time in centuries
But upon the first touch -
Light meets stone -
The sea shudders
Ecstasy
And in repayment for salvation
Out come the bottles
Floating to the surface
Bathing in the light
All of my secrets

Mighty arms give a tender cuddle from behind
Eternal heater
Sensation of chest and stomach against spine
"tell me a secret"
soft lips on foreheads and noses
narwhals nudge
"I've got a secret ..."
"What's that?"
"You make life, interesting ..."
" … Good or bad?"
"Good ... you show me things I've never done before."

My name is Barnacle, calcified to you
Your name is Boa constrictor, squeezing till the last breathe
Inadequate sum of memories, so
drifting nowhere any time soon

Crazy reared its many heads
Twisted shades of paisley swirls
Kaleidoscope emotionality
Rollercoaster of fear and love
Through the storms of mushroom clouds
An air of peace remained
For that ever-changing scene
Was founded in the purest love
The realest dream come true
No fear of insanity consuming truth
Truth is kaleidoscopes are beautiful
Never boring by design
There is peace in the knowledge
That crazy is exceptional, brilliant
To know a soul, exciting
And through it all
We traverse the universe as one
Riding the wings of insanity
Skiing across the seas
On the backs of narwhals
Simply because they are awesome

Emily wants to be a Prince when she grows up.
Emily knows that wind comes from trees waving their branches
when they dance to sunsongs, stirring the air up,
and when Emily looks at the beach she knows
that seals are just narwhals without horns
and narwhals are just unicorns that forgot to get on the Ark
when God drowned the world in His tears
(so He gave them tails instead of hooves
and let them swim in all His misery forever).

Emily parts her hair on the side
so she can be a Prince when she grows up.
She parts her hair on the side and wears leggings
and a little green hat and runs bare-chested
through the forest catching fairies

and on clear nights Emily can see her moonshadow
and they dance together, four and forty feet tall.

Prince Emily has a cardboard castle.
It used to be a house but Emily took some crayons
and drew herself crown moulding and flower boxes
because she wants to be a Prince when she grows up
and she took that box and brought it
under the electric fence
and past the cow field to the
(rapidly disappearing
on account of those
mysterious trucks
that drive by at night)
forest and to her
very favourite
spot

by the stream.

Maybe she’s there right now,
looking at the water and wishing it would ever
even in the summer grow warm enough to swim.
Maybe she’s there right now,
with her chest bare and her hair blonde
and her eyes huge and blue
and her face messy with berry juice
because there’s no-one to tell her
to wipe her chin
and no-one to tell her
to grow her hair long
like the other girls.

So Prince Emily parts her hair on the side
and talks to Peter Pan and Robin Hood
and her own shadow
and sometimes
God.

I've a cache of four youth leaders
In the back of my mind
But it's best to keep
Them in the dark.

My fascination with
Binder clips
Just won't leave
My desk.

I swear, I do not
Remember last summer.

I also don't remember
The last four sermons in my psyche.

I will wear this
Nose ring like a princess
But I'm afraid
Of panic attacks and frosted doughnuts.

The water vaporizer and
The narwhals
Frequently run off together
And go to Somalia for Christmas.

I'm begging you not
To remind me of the Chevy t-shirt
Because I cannot get the
Ketchup and pasta off my reasons.

I let myself fall
I let myself be liked
I let the birds chirp their song of freedom
I let my book drop to the floor
I let the window be my soldier
I let flowers tickle the bees
I let myself stand up
I let the bathtub flood my apartment
I let you think I was a tooth fairy
I let coffee drip down your face into your mouth
I let the ocean turn black
I let the air vessel float with its mighty wings
I let losing be the new winning
I let good poems die for the sake of narwhals
I let her into my kitchen
I let her eat the food in front of her without a spoon
I let the fork in its cave with its many twins
I let the bubbles in their bottles as I sipped from their mouth
I let the dress float through the ground level liquid
I let myself believe your truth
I let myself walk on
I let me be folly.

After Matthew Dickman's *24 Hours