your song i sing
down by the sea this last summer day
the sun shining sidewise on a
tropical slide
foam stiffens and dries in the air
leaving a golden shell of salt and
sand
which we shed like insects with
minute contractions
of invisible muscles as we mount the
stark dunes
neglected expanse of widows abandoned
in loneliness mounded rolling nude in
the wind
crossing the highway out to the
meadows
parched summer grasses the color of
hair
marching through a stand of cronish
oaks
with shriveled breasts
whose fingers implore release of the
sky
cupping the wind in skeletal palms
their hearts exploding yet in verdant
gore
here is there nothing so human as
myself
as i have him lead me
the weight of my flesh rubbing
warming me inward
my hair in the sky we ascend to the
hills
i strive with the trees but i dream
of the sea
where all is crisp with death i
moisten
such is my womanhood’s power to life
from the shore to the hill
i let him speak like a stranger
imploring demanding waxing and waning
he sweeps through the seasons
now a wind now a whimper
i let him go on let him frost thaw
and bluster
from march to august to april again
until i’ve heard quite enough i have
come to season
now i touch him just once and he pops
like a blowfish
all spine and taut flesh straining
and staring
a fish out of water gone apoplectic
in an alien weather
…the distant highway is a ribbon
around a bundle of hills
it winds its way down to a toy city
and a darkened room
where the cat stalks her boredom
in a frame on the mantel
my image resides
frozen in another life
beside my bed in little bottles
resembling crystal
liquid musk gleams golden
behind foreign words
suggestive of passion
the room is full of secret moments
which do not concern me now…
in plain view of the city i stretch
make myself naked
and i pull him down to me providing a
sea
now and swimming him through me
he acts like a stranger imploring
demanding
now waxing now waning a wind and a
whimper
frost thaw and bluster i let him go
on
and the breeze rises harshly
drowning his babbling voice in my ear
as i gaze on the sky to avoid the
distraction
of the bobbing and gobbling
as caught in a frenzy like a fish in
a net
he withdraws charges blindly again
and again
for the sea is a drug is a strong
anesthetic
i can draw his blood freely feel it
flow hot and slimy
and deftly my fingers are tracing my
portrait
in red sticky liquid on the flesh of
his shoulders
as i fathom the milky blind eye of
the sky
and i am a tide rising gripping a
monolith
set on the beach as an object of
worship
by some ancient race as old as the
shore
a tide like a hand gripping sliding
releasing
muscular sinewy fingers of wavelets
pumping hard toward a peak of
delicious fatigue
wave upon wave sliding sucking to
swallow
the shaft of that rock in the depths
of the sea
wave upon wave of salt spray and
suction
rising and heaving and straining and
yearning
until for a long moment the sea is
contracting
and pulsing and swirling and i’m
seeing my image
flashing and burning across the swift
clouds
that are boiling and churning
in the smothering winds that scream
and then sigh
and lost in the distance something
frantically pulsing
is pumping and toiling to urgently
offer
but a spurt to my boundless my
infinite measure
…freed from myself
i turn back now to him
but release has brought calm
to the rage of the maelstrom
he just soaks away
through the hair of the grasses…
far away my cat stretches tries her
claws on the rug
X
