Bathing After a Ride

I am pearling
silt gritty in in the mouth of a mollusk
A tide repeats
washing knee to hip socket
muscles and sinews
hot in the washing water.

IT'S BEEN SO DASTARDLY LONG AND I AM SORRY!!!

(but more poems forthcoming!!!)

7/27 (listening to a friend work on a story)
Silvery fricatives bouncing out in a tonguish frenzy
sharp notes telling stories
that carve out spaces in the dark.
It’s not quite music
but there are those who sway
& close their eyes as if it were.
Your body in this story
is a crow’s beak cracking
& your hands are a lucky blanket with a few holes worn into it.


6/28 restaurant poem
Butcher paper flakes and flails
bunching like hide beneath the palms.

This love note is for high high kite flying
—for anchoring lightning to your heart keys
—for making science of electrical storms.
This love note is meant to be turned upsidedown
in the answer key of your calculus textbook.



6/29
Your kiss pulls the fire alarm in my lungs,
whistles & bells become a beehive between the ears
& every sensible adult fiber of my being is running about,
Wild with the notion of fire.

8/12
The moon sees right through me tonight.
Quiet and timeless in her lavender stockings
she thumbs around that flat pastel landscape,
and makes the adjectives run rampant over a tumble of timorous thoughts.

The evening is just staring to grow out its beard,
Jellyfish torn up & pressed against distant mountain shapes.
I am simple & slightly sore in this story on the island at twilight
& in this story all of the light bulbs flash then die out
at every gasp of emptied lusty breath
our throats pull what they can from the smoke-filled air.
When we come together I begin breathing like a light house.

Sinews push action electric through the skin
Our moon is burning brighter now,
swinging like a single breast waiting to be bookended.
I’ve always thought that the sky should have at least two moons
like the sky is actually just some big cloth wrapped around a woman’s body,
at most a single breast slips out once
maybe twice a month.

We would swing that other moon into action
Smashing out new gravity.
Catastrophic tidal changes would ensue,
Our bodies becoming flooded coastal cities.
Thick red algae washes up on street corners.
Between crashes of water & light
I watch your skyscraper eyes getting their feet wet.
And when we open out mouths to speak
Only the low grinding of whale song comes out.

(I think this one is really yummy but it needs some working over before it is book ready!)

Patience & Rhythmic Salt

I am waiting for the bricks to pull me in,
for the bass to ultimately shake the fantasies into action;
call forth an alternate universe:

An ocean of jitters
endlessly coming & going--
Making frothy footholds at the moon's expense.
Our minds have got jellyfish & driftwood for teeth;
Our poem coming up loose with mouthfuls of sand,
The thoughts crust over & dry out
like leftover starfish.

She drinks like a fish
who has a liver for every broken heartbeat.
Fish bones beguile the teeth
& finger the roof of your mouth like an insect

& I am waiting for the embrace of the jellyfish;
for the year of the sand-dollar
-a time when this series of crashes might buy you back.

I am waiting for the tide to wash up
empty of fish heads & needle bones,
Waiting for the salt to heal
for the jellyfish to untie their stings
(&move forward in the tempo of the lungs)

I am waiting for the moment I can reach up
and pry open tha short yawn of sunshine,
plant my hook in the yellow mouth of sky,
and drag her by the teeth into spring.