"seagreen" poems
All summer we moved in a villa brimful of echos,
Cool as the pearled interior of a conch.
Bells, hooves, of the high-stipping black goats woke us.
Around our bed the baronial furniture
Foundered through levels of light seagreen and strange.
Not one leaf wrinkled in the clearing air.
We dreamed how we were perfect, and we were.
Against bare, whitewashed walls, the furniture
Anchored itself, griffin-legged and darkly grained.
Two of us in a place meant for ten more-
Our footsteps multiplied in the shadowy chambers,
Our voices fathomed a profounder sound:
The walnut banquet table, the twelve chairs
Mirrored the intricate gestures of two others.
Heavy as a statuary, shapes not ours
Performed a dumbshow in the polished wood,
That cabinet without windows or doors:
He lifts an arm to bring her close, but she
Shies from his touch: his is an iron mood.
Seeing her freeze, he turns his face away.
They poise and grieve as in some old tragedy.
Moon-blanched and implacable, he and she
Would not be eased, released. Our each example
Of temderness dove through their purgatory
Like a planet, a stone, swallowed in a great darkness,
Leaving no sparky track, setting up no ripple.
Nightly we left them in their desert place.
Lights out, they dogged us, sleepless and envious:
We dreamed their arguments, their stricken voices.
We might embrace, but those two never did,
Come, so unlike us, to a stiff impasse,
Burdened in such a way we seemed the lighter-
Ourselves the haunters, and they, flesh and blood;
As if, above love's ruinage, we were
The heaven those two dreamed of, in despair.
3.2k
the beach is for losing yourself
i ask you what manner of man or beast could ignore its siren song
it dragged our silly smiles across the sand
feet trailing giddily behind us
we slipped wearied into the warm unceasing avalanche
and a year was washed away
in the thunderous salt rinse
the beach is for best friends and for beer
it is for games beneath the stars
while a plankton metropolis fluoresced underfoot
and a meteor grazed the spine of leo
we slumbered through brooding rains
that slunk away when we awoke to stare them down
white shapes cast slender shadows on the reeds at noon
sea breezes crooned tunes every child has always known
in languages no man will ever understand
the beach is for all of us
last night we dreamt of ancestral slimes marching out of it
today let us plunge in
it is for even creeping snakes and gnawing fleas
verily
but most of all
it is for your glistening face
for two sleepy seagreen eyes accustoming themselves to the bright shores of morning
while your coffee cooled on the camp stove
it is for the sheen of your wild brown arms
the surf of your laughter
words with which you filled a quiet moment
circling in my mind like gulls over the harbor
yes most of all
most of all
it is for you
speeding down the narrow cape
i was beside you
tapping in tandem with your electronic music
realizing more with every pastel cottage flickering by
that you had found me
and i had never felt
so safe
Jun 9, 2013
Jun 9, 2013 at 3:25 AM UTC
thalassia, my love, how can you forsake me
for the arms of neptune?
your absent eyes speak
my pleas are in vain.
she turns back to the wild ocean
sad seagreen eyes seeking the horizon
a gull cries
as eel to ancestral river
she slips beneath the surface
in deep rippling azure light
her element revealed.
as you are one, you will return to one
i cannot follow..
brief ecstatic hours, loved by a nixie
and i am ruined
my futile tears are seafoam
left on the beach after a storm.
my useless nets left behind
i will cast them no more
Mar 10, 2012
Mar 10, 2012 at 6:52 PM UTC
And I find myself seeing everything pertaining to her.
The sunset on seagreen waves reflects off the sand like her creamy white skin and ice warm eyes.
Some stranger’s smile in the park seems to glisten just as hers does when her rosy blood-drained lips spread so even.
A character from the TV screen seems to match her perfectly perfected pitch or create the same unthought delicate gesture that is more graceful than the ballerina’s pleat.
And I think maybe if I fill the utter corners of my heart and soul with these minute details of her mere existence I will become closer to her.
Closer to grasping her heart and her hand.
Closer to holding her soul and her face with mine.
But, it has occurred to me that no one person in the world can symbolize this woman.
No person in the world has her beauty and her rhythm.
And I can try all I can to be with her. Even when she is right next to me.
But, I know that I will never have her.
Because this woman cannot be had.
Dec 17, 2012
Dec 17, 2012 at 7:19 PM UTC
It all started in March with
the people on television claiming
that it will be back to
normal in three months but
now it’s here for
it’s first birthday as I watch in
horror as the death toll rises from
nearly zero to half a million and the
stupid curve never deflating i’m
sick and tired of people being sick and
tired and “forgetting” that humans are
dying as if it's okay to go out just because
you’re some kind of ******** celebrity why
can’t you understand that the
world doesn’t
revolve around you i
stand helpless while
corporations boast that we’re “all
in this together” when we’re
not because unlike me you can
make a difference but yet you
sit on a throne made of
cash while essential workers struggle to
breathe their mask digging into their
skin tears dripping onto seagreen scrubs
i’m starting to
think that the real
virus is
you.
Mar 2, 2021
Mar 2, 2021 at 6:31 PM UTC