Sea People

washes over me
gristling
like that
too much for me to
inhale
and i careen,
silver fin,
under this,
the film, surface.
naked, beneath the abalone
i have
cherished
my skin is alive, tender,
and i am fragile.
if i ask
that you touch me
it is a treasure,
a gift,
that i have denied
myself,
the coldest of oceans.

i know

it's just that it's a terror
forces me to flinch
and behind my eyes i still
shake
but i think that you can see that.
perceptive in your musings.
i just can't let this go, not now,
and if i pull too far away,
i'm lost, more terrified than ever.
i'm holding, i'm relishing you,
and i am trembling.
standing still.
there are no promises, no certainties,
i know,
and i'm wandering in the day to day,
it's just that i can't be broken,
not again. and it's a terror,
an idiocy,
but if i pull too far away...

i'm holding.

Call you up, in the middle of the night...

i can tell i've woken him, and i'm surprised he'd been asleep at all.
he sounds far away and husky, just like always. never changes.
after i spill it out, barely breathing, words like quicksilver,
he's quiet for a bit:
"have you spoken to Jonas? or the Captain? they'd be able to help you better than i can..."
he's quiet for a while.
"i'm not so sure we'll be speaking for a while anyway."
i say that's a good thing, that hopefully, he's right.
"you should call the Captain, he'll help."
i tell him that the Captain's out on sail, wrangling up the last of the Narwhals, he won't be back for a while, and besides, i can't talk to him again until i've sailed alone.
"then talk to Jonas," he says. "tell him what you told me. i don't understand why you're calling me..."
i tell him i've already been to visit Jonas, and that he did, in fact, help me.
"so why call me? what good does this do?"
i'm quiet for a moment, and i tell him, slowly:
"Meridian is not my name."
there is a click,
and the line is dead.
i feel sick.

Visit With Jonas

i went to the fields today.
i had to see him, talk to him again.
the swarms were warm with nectar and knowing.
he asks me to be silent, "don't say a word."

i know his gaze, silky, all along my frame
and he knows,
he listens to my vibrations.
there is so much, and so little energy.

"you don't have to go back. your meaning is here, in your hands."
he takes my hand and points out into the fields, beyond the skeps, endless.
"as far as you can see, there is open space, golden."
i look away.
there is so much i do not want to hear, that i can't register, i am
lack-luster. darkened.
he will not let me drift.
"look at me boy, don't you see? you are, you are beautiful-abandoned. the work's not done, the hive ain't finished, your pollen is falling away. pick it up, just pick it up."

haven't snapped to this.
i must take it to the hive.
i walk away, and though the weight has not been lifted,
i know there's honey there,
sticky,
and sweet.
i'll take it to the hive.

Palais De Thé

it's difficult to discern, with all these leaves swirling
in my cup
like laughter almost
ridiculous.
i think that i can pick it up
the things not said
or lingerings unlingered
anymore,
and i think that i can read your book
between your words.
sometimes my currents
flow haphazard
skipping
and i wonder at it all, in you
and me
and these
eyes belong to you.
in ways the tea cannot fathom,
in my cup
at the bottom,
no longer floating.
is it me, this?
i take a sip.

the Horror

in my night-hours i see

the jerkings of a shadowed poppy

the wind moves it so

it seems to mimick

gesture

like a grand exclamation,

"pourquoi êtes-vous seul?"

i answer with a gesture in return

i creep

slow, like the drip of honey-drops, slippery

up to it's perch

lone green hill in pale

Artemis' light,

and cut, with my silver blade,

cut

at the stem.

"i am not alone," i say.

and it slips easily into my coat pocket, a companion

for the continuation of my wanderings,

darkly.

it cringes.

Pearl

---distance is deceptive in it's entirety---

like a book without it's cover, is a lie, is a treachery,

and you take it without question.

i fumble with the letters that make the words

that make the sum of my experience, my days, my

whisperings.

this is such a farce, is a nuisance, to watch the hostile

monotony of the free-flowing dips and curses of a child

who can't remember, can't do anything right.

and you can't do anything right.

but it isn't burning like you thought it would forever, anymore.

it's a quiet wound with scars pink, to remember. you remember their names, every one,

like a catalogue, names names names, and

they

waltz

right

off

the page, and you keep calling them up, you melancholy babe.

it's nothing new, with you, you and your baths in old water

trying to reach for the sea, and you can swim, mind you. i've seen it.

you just fall short of the boat.

are you remembering? are you crying? is it my fault?

did i destroy you, every last bit of your future, is that what it was?

i don't have the answers anymore.

but it reaches me

into the shell of things.

oyster baby,

i hide

i collect

i watch,

and that's the tragedy, if there is one, don't you see it?

i see you for what you are,

and i have loved it, every second.

and you hide,

you collect,

i watch,

for all these years,

and i'm sorry, god-damnit, i'm sorry.

and it's not enough, though you say it is.

it's never enough.

oyster baby.

the Letter Installment

Letter 2

i thought that after all this time, i would say that i'm sorry.
i'm sorry that i let you go on believing, for so many years, that i had never forgiven you.
i forgave you almost immediately, to be quite honest.
i hated you for a while, i think you know that.
honestly, i couldn't believe what you had done. that it was more than once.
i couldn't believe that you would do that to her, mostly, but to your family. to me.
i loved you, i still love you. i don't understand sometimes, and sometimes it's too much to think about. and the worst part of it is......it's that i could believe what you had done.
because for the first time, for the very first time, i saw you for what you were, and you weren't a monster. you were just human. you fucked up and that was it. you weren't without your mistakes.
and i knew that it wasn't about me, or it shouldn't be, (sometimes I'm not sure though, maybe in ways it is about me, and all of us, i just don't know), but it still hurt like a splinter. i couldn't pick it out, for all this time, and in all of this time i still have the scars where i tried to cut you out. i tried to dig and pull and cut you out. and after the bloody horror that i made of myself, you were still there. you were still fucking there.
but it's fine, it's cool, it's allright.
and i mean that. it's taken till now for me to say that.
and i know that you wanted more out of..........out of me&you, and maybe me. it's just that i felt like i couldn't be what you wanted, couldn't be enough for you.
what am i supposed to be, exaclty? and i've asked myself that question with every man i've come across. and they always have an answer, or something kind of resembling one, only they dont' say it. they don't tell me straight out, but i always know that somehow, i'm not exactly what they want or need or love or lust or even like.
so anyway, i've learned a lot from you, and not just bad things, but a lot of good things. things about being human and making mistakes.
you weren't the only one. you still aren't. you should know that.
it's just that i had this picture of what love should be like, you know? and you and mom, you were kind of it for me. i thought that that was how the story goes, and it's a little silly, i know, but what did i know then? i was too young, and in ways, i'm still too young. but i just thought that things should be a certain way, and then you....................you went and screwed it up. and i wanted to know why. i wanted an apology. i wanted justice. i wanted you to break and see what you had done.
but it wasn't about me, was it?
i know.
it's just that i'm confused still, about a lot of things, and i'm not sure where i'm at exactly, i know i'm not fully with it yet, but i know i'm getting there. and you've even helped with that.
and i just think you should know that i forgave you a long time ago. and i've always loved you. i was your first born after all.
so, that's it. i know this isn't your conventional, cookie-cutter, store-bought card, but
Happy Father's Day.
love you.

the Letter Installment

Letter 1

i thought i'd say some things i haven't tried yet.
i know all these little things about me, and when i don't speak them,
don't let them fly about, they get smaller still.
so i thought i'd let them test their feathers today, and just flutter around,
circling, till they land. don't know where.
i know that i want you to just be.
not to change or to melt into who it is that i am (whatever that may be)
but to just be this person that loves the thing i'm being at the time.
this way, you can be you and i can just be, and i'll know that whatever you think of me
is really about me and not some other something.
does this make sense?
and i want you to want me, like a wish, like a star, like a bold fire.
i want it to hurt, how much you want me, so much that we don't make it in the house before you attack me with your kisses, on the threshold of the house, in the doorway, in the hall, on the floor.
hurt so bad.
i want to be beautiful. not pretty, or picture-good, but more than that.
i want to be what's behind my distraction of skin and eyes and whatever else they want to touch......
i want you to look at me and think that i am beautiful, the heart of me.
is this too much?
i feel like a child, almost.
spilling my desires un-edited and coarse,
unchanged, without fear.
and maybe this is why i never let them fly,
they stumble in the air.
crippled butterflies.
but i thought you should know, and maybe i should know.
these things, i never give them room to speak.
i am a cruel master.

Taxi Ride in City, Nocturnal

baby doesn't reel from the low-light
-"can you stop this heady charge?"-
if we could just burn for a moment,
i'm sure of this
i'm sure of you.
look
i
can't see the cold currents,
and
i
don't feel the blister
if it's not full-flowing,
then what am i doing?
could this be misfortune?
if i run my hands along brick walls
feel the night through my skin like the lost and churlish
children of the dusk
i'll wake up
i'll turn inside, out
like a lantern,
chinese,
papery and light,
on the husk of my new era.

Travels

inveterate sounds
like
rusted lava from the back-alleys of that city
where we called up spirits
high in our reveries from yesterdays and
in this vein
i crawl into cavernous
spread
new volatile springs
and it trembles me
it reminds
and i look out,
the Seine is not as it seems under
watery gown.

What you learn

from the small steps
the bruises blazing new on the surface of your distraction,
from the fallen stars of old nights
the murky dissapointments of everyman,
from the flicker of new heartstrings
the flush of amorous smiles,
little bursts, primordial echo
feeds into our connections,
synapses make the jump.
from the northern lights and the setting fires of our horizons
it's nothing nothing
but this
small
molecule
of the every day, the vast expanding black of eldritch stars.
and we rejoice in it,
the light
the light.

Meridian and Porcelain-Me

in my night wanderings

you spoke about drearies past

and i listened

for the first time

unhindered by my own whimpering interruptions.

you looked at me with your grey-blue eyes,

seas of old and terrifying years reflected there,

and with a glitch in your voice you give:

"it isn't that they're nothings, it isn't that you haven't held,

it's more that you have come this far out, that you're not lost out there,

drowning."

your head turns, eyes follow the tide,

i know that somewhere in there, you're breaking too

but somehow you don't scatter.

i want to learn this too.

you take my hand, and this time,

this time

i'll brave the cold seas,

i'll learn to sail.

"I love to sing-a......"

"I love to sing-a

about the moon-a

and the June-a

and the spring-a"

Proposition: Humor Me

i followed the path
to your little hub-house
and i walked right in just like i always do
and sat myself right down.
you never asked (you never needed to), you never cried, didn't even look up
and i
just kept on spilling it all out like water from your glass.
but if i just recoil a little more into
the cushions of your plaid-couch
i'll feel the pain of your stilletto-stares
a little less
and less and less
and less
yes,
it's just
that i
need a wonder, need a flight,
need a kite that i can sail up above yours, just a little, everyday
and you thought you understood, but really you didn't and i secretly
wondered when
it would snap and break, and you would just scream.
and so i know
i said i know
that you can't take it like that anymore
and it's a pill
that i can't swallow
to live inside the lines that you have drawn
wide with your crayons.
if you wanna laugh you wanna bleat you wanna power me down
a little i understand
it's just that i know i'll be walking out of your hub-bub in a minute
and this is only on your noodle for now. you'll forget, you'll remember
less
and less and less and less
yes.

Sweet the Sting- My muse of late...

Melodic Reverie

brilliantly combing the sands of Niger,
some far-away tune, from the back of the house,
slinks it's way into the heart of room,
filling up, filling up
jumbles and cups, chairs and pages
in my blank journals.

principia, my love.
deluge, escape, the water breaks, breaks,
terrible, like some strange, immemorial creature,
cold erudition, multiple stages, and eyes like blue opal.

this lullaby delivers new jostling, new theories,
fresh cream.
i lap it up, cat-like,
after my nap.

Simmer

if i could pretend
you're delicious,
Sundays at request
what would it take for you to open
flower
Orchid, Oolong?
not sure of myself from most others
you don't know what you have done,
what you can do.
from one of these moments
we can draw it all out
color it just as we'd hoped
it wasn't too far from here was it?
surreptitious is the way it spells and
folds out
your cookbook is full up with
old things
Thyme, Rosemary, Ginger,
devilish Saffron.
don't take it away.
the vine,
la mer,
and me.

Pagan shrines and illusory skeps....

"jasmine foxed me in her grove"
get out of my garden...
I see you lingering.

jesuits in colors bled from strangeness, delusional-licorice, pensive, look a lot like the skin of my
ghosts.
here in this garden, i'll raise storms, blast boundaries, step sideways
and into the pollenated realm, the sleep of it, the sleep.
cannot hold me in your mathematics, i'll call
old names,
verses out of time,
sing it out into skies open wide with water and cotton-wisps.
i'll build it and they will hear my voice.
i'll wait here,
datura,
sleepy bell.

Pretty Pretty

garden muse

Calendula Oil

walking under Leo, this path is long
without boundries, broken papoose,
i encounter the skep of my summers.

mid-field, sky grey with thunders,
thunders
step to the familiar house of my commons and trivialities,
my pulses and sanguine-parts.
lone emissary, intrepid, dilligent as i have never been,
bumbles out, circles, targets my third eye.

prickly, then spindly-currents, sharp and cruel,
rush, shatter the nerves all along my face.
I am afraid, I feel such a sting,
and nowhere,
nowhere is the Beekeeper.
I'll fix my own infusion.
and rub the oil,
rub the oil.

Afraid of Treasure, on the Other-Side

kick along your shoals
it isn't the way you lose control
isn't in the way you hold me against the wall
but in the way your syllables catch and hook me
like gossamer wire, spindled, thick.

know about your bubbles, bubbles
pop aloud for me, and that's appreciated.
parallel my trunks and boxes, full, of sticky journals
and there between, writhes the tricky-blowback.
it is a wonder, it is a nightmare that i possess
that all of these, the gilded embrace, the sound word,
that all of these are paper-thin and i am so
aflame.
you too, are not the cooling that i sought.
a dancing spark, a trickling smelt, my lovely.
firefly.

Just like that

clambered out this morning, jumped out and into
my serious-skin, put on a sweet face and headed into the gloom.
thought about your words back when, your jumbles and precisions
and your articulations when you wanted them.
thought we were one thing, you thought the other, and then it just sort
of sorted out, and here we are.
one there and without the other.
and we could maybe go grab a bite to eat sometime
at the chinese place of our nights, but i don't think you'd want to see me now
or the other way around.
picked up the phone, dialed my mother,
she said things are all fine, another lie, and hit my head 5 times
to shake some screws loose. they didn't loosen.
when i got down to where i was headed, turned the corner, and parked my car
shut my door, just like i always do, and tried to walk away,
my shoelaces (come undone) catch themselves in the door, and jerk me back, hold me. can't walk away just yet.
just like it always is.
think i'll call you up some day and say hello, ask you how you've been and are you
still living all alone inside, up there?