i am seaglass
collect me along the shore
i am once jagged edges
now dulled by time and salt
wounds full of salt
i have forgotten what sweet is
foggy clouded
clarity lost for the sake of beauty
i am discarded
collect me along the shore
i am scattered in pieces
that no longer fit together
curves and waves
i am tough i am smooth
i have lived my life in rough waters
water and rock
have rearranged my shape
i am under your feet
collect me along the shore

I was born
In metal and machines
Taken from my innertia
and used for anothers gain
until I was discarded
floating lifeless
useless

But then I came to rest
Here, among the golden sands
In this salty aired serenity
Away from the torment of man
and I once again found innertia.
and my peace resumed.

I was a glass bottle
all shattered and cold
a boy in a rage
broke me ******* the cove
but you gathered my pieces
took them in your tides
you softened my edges
made opaque my insides
now dear i’m your seaglass
i’m smooth to the touch
hold me soft in your palm
dear i love you so much

Flecks of greens and blues glisten and glow
Tiny shards scattered
Parting into lulling waves of gritty pebble ashes
Little specks touched by souls who reside beyond the horizon
Or perhaps beyond where flesh can travel.
Who touched this smoothed transparent crumb
Besides the vast blankets of briny deep that swept it from there to here?
My fingers imprint themselves as I toss it back into the water.
Now I too can go beyond the fading horizon, and join those who were similarly touched by the remnants of material being.

She sat by the window, with the rain pelting the foggy glass, breathing hot air into the cold. She took her finger and slowly ran it across the pane, pushing away the gathered dew and then running her fingers up, down, up, down. G O N E sprawled in messy cursive. Her thoughts were as dreary as everything surrounding her. It was as if the rain was complementing her. After all, if it was sunny, depressing thoughts would be banished to the back of her head.

They had all left her, her past lovers. Their words echoed across the wooden floor, false promises stealing pieces of her heart until the outer shell was the only thing that remained. It was beautiful really. Her shell was so delicate, like a bottle tossed into the ocean, broken and grinded against the sand and rocks, until it finally rested on a beach somewhere, all edges smoothed. She was seaglass, a reminder of the past, but beautiful.

the first told her that she was an angel, just one without wings. “But that’s ok” , he said, “sometimes there is no need to fly”. He found a  single mom on concord avenue two weeks later. She got child support. He bought her a ring soon after.

The third she met in the winter, where for months, white was the only variation of color. He liked to push her on her sled, but he laughed with more joy when he pushed her down the stairs. Red was the second color discovered that winter.

The fourth was the last. His love aged like a plum, darker and sweeter each week she was with him. He stroked her knee with his fingers when they sat upright at the doctor’s office, and he stroked her neck with his lips as she cried, laying horizontally on his bed. “Where did you get the scars on your back?”  he would murmur into her skin.

“I fell down the stairs once”,  she would whisper in the direction of his voice, her words floating in the darkness of the bedroom. The tip of his thumb would run down the pale pink scars, but she wouldn’t feel him there, that part of her had become numb long before. He left her two years later, his side of the room empty except for the spare key resting on the mahogany side table. His smell still lingered carelessly on her pillow.

Whenever it rained, she sat at the window, shadows gathering at her feet.

meet her gaze and see
speckled pebbles in a cool brook, which glimmer and radiate
a thousand fleeting stars

I read manuscripts in the creased skin
Of her lips
I ache,

as the waves smooth glass
into soft, clouded,
infinite

i’m sorry your love does not fit into my junk mail
and that i will not become a hoarder for you
you say you’re disgusting
but i think you’ve rubbed yourself raw against my skin
until your bones have become protruding branches from your body
the blood that used to circulate through me
has now turned into sand
you punctured my lungs and i started leaking beaches
there are no sandcastles, just chunks of broken seaglass
just pebbles and bugs and dirt
you can’t shield me from the sun, i’ve already been burnt
so now when people step on me
i burn back

*(a.m.c.)

"It's just one cut,"
said the sharp lady doctor before language
melted off her clipboard and the operating lamps
grew huge and spilled their bright innards into my eyes.

I lay on the cold tiled floor of the museum.
One monstrous cut -- the white shark suspended
above in a last hungry lunge yawns, belly open.
Around me what a wide-eyed fisherman pulled out:
old tires, whale-oil lamps, Damien Hirst, bones upon bones.
Damien sits on a tire, bored as hell. See the jagged edges,
he says, they pulled him into our cold afterlife
and cut while he suffocated, explosive oxygen flooding
his lungs from the wrong direction.

Later, the doctors showed me
what had for so long kicked and screamed to be out.
Liver-colored, swollen, wrapped in catgut, it was not
as expected. Others had promised ground seaglass,
poppyseed freckles, huge lungs like fibrous balloons
for flying or spouting poetry nonstop in day-long stretches.
Where were my eyes?
It was supposed to have my eyes.

This obsession, with the regression-
                                         Well I'd never lean my lessons faster than
                                    The tide swaying my bones in a bottle
                             Out to the jetti where the jaded rocks crashed me
                    I became seaglass, a smoothed over mass that
                                 Taught me, nothing,
                                             Taught me,nothing-
                                              And dried salt sprayed our eyes
                                                   Liquified voices,called our names
                                                           ­      Countless times;
                                                    A doubt to follow our old ways
                                          A risen flame, just brushing the lions mane
                                             Oh sweet, silly things, much bigger
                                       Than I can see,you right infrount of
                                   Where I need to be—
                              "Where do I need to be?"
                       I tried every road, the breaks failed me
                 The careless casualties
                       Taught me nothing,
                       Taught me nothing.

There once was a boy with bones of obsidian and onyx eyes.
He held me as if all that was beneath my
thickly woven sweater sleeves was my
hollow crystal skeleton.
He held me up to the light like
seaglass he discovered on the beach
and let the sunset filter through me.
One night the onyx in his eyes was sparkling with glints of ruby
and what he didn't know when he
wrapped his hand around my neck and squeezed too tight,
reached into my chest and stole an artery from my rose quartz heart
and an amethyst knuckle from my ring finger,
was that beneath my rose-gold toenails
were leaden feet.
I kicked him swiftly in the groin and ran.
Then came a boy with sapphire eyes.
When he touched me, I felt polished and clean.
He was the first boy I let
take off my knitted sweater.
He stroked the smooth surface of my bones
and when he shattered them,
he would help me repair them.
Between the cracks of my translucent skeleton
are slivers of the shiniest sapphire
you've ever seen.

to kiss you senseless until i am a seaglass buried deep inside your skin. to lick salt off your palms with paper-cut lips, until each breath has gone haywire. to quietly sigh your name until it baptizes my heathen tongue. oh, the wars i would start; the wars i would end — darling, there is something soothing about all the violent ways i can love you.

i sleep through the sunrise often

it’s a regret i know i’ll think about
when i’m older, wiser, when i would rather be sitting than standing
on the edge of youth
and if the current carries me
to a moment where i can no longer see clearly
but still can feel
fully
i’ll stare outside the window to the world turned upside down
where skies are bluer than before, but faded
in such a way that memories feel too

i hope i learn a thing or two.. or three about
hundreds of people taking little parts of me
and my heart
to leave me holding onto the railing
so i don’t fall
when i’m weaker than i was
balancing on the edge of my youth

there's a slight difference between
jumping and falling

i still don't know which hurts more
you fall 7 times, and i was taught to stand up 8.
so on the count of nine, i'll jump

off the deep end
into the abyss
between the heartbreakers
and the heartbroken

like brown beer bottles
one in a million
swallowed by the sea
all but damaged through such treachery
turned to treasure

captured by the innocent hands
of little girls
who collect mason jars full of these broken
pieces of wave washed glass

i try to catch as many sunsets as i can
and i even chase them if they'd just slow down
just for a moment
so i can pause to think about how good it will feel to fall
without jumping

The water that is crushing me
is keeping me afloat.
I cannot feel the ground beneath,
and I'm not sure I can stand.
The pressure that is bearing me
is holding all my insides in
No longer see a shoreline
and I can't know I won't drown.
As I navigate myself,
and twist to find my East and West
I realize I've made quite a mess-
Left my compass with a gull.
The bird you see,
liked shiny things
and as I thought I had no use
for which direction
I might take
I felt it
quite an easy trade-
the weight of choices off my hands
And the bird with flightpath clear.
The sodden feel of water now
has permeated all my pores
and left me to shed salty tears
My feet ache for the ground.
I will tumble like the seaglass
with each wave my edges blur
perhaps the the sea will make me clean
Stripped of sin
and stripped of ache.
Perhaps this long night will end soon
If I can just
keep
floating
just keep
treading water...
just a while more.

Sahn
10/30/17

i wish to forget you.
but forever will you remain
in the soft curves
and sharp wit
of my poetry,
hidden
behind double meanings
and shards of my heart,

each line
its own wave,
stroking and begging
the shore
to remember,
please remember…
as seaglass eyes
meet my own,

and somehow
i’m drowning
standing still,
when slender hands
follow their own rhythm
and now
i am fire,
full of flames,

just then
those plush pink
lips
drip sugar-coated lies
and soon
i crave
the inadequacy
of your attention

i wish to forget you.
i may pretend,
but you are tangled
within my poetry-

this love may be mortal
but these words are eternal.

Blue-watered lullabies
accompany your eyes
my treasure chest beckons
Rippled memories swirling
Circles near a gulls wing play in the water
Too many shells and seaglass to enjoy and carry
Yet, I do take their memory with me
The ocean carries me
Cliffs call out because they noticed the dolphin gang
trying to get closer earlier on
We've walked on water because the sand never kept us still
You know a greater truth that because keep secret in a place known to those like us
Still falling deeper than a submarine can submerge with you
It's the way of the owl
It's the way of the swan
It's the way beaches make me feel
This love and bond can tumble but not with so many beaches yet to walk on and explore

C@rainbowchaser2019

The last streams of daylight fade away,
Like the frail afterimage
Of melancholic memories;
Drifting quietly like seaglass,
Submerged in an unfamiliar world.