HOWL, A SEA SHANTY, WHYDONTCHU (2016)
PART ONE
The sea wasn’t doing good.
Binded
by a dozen IV tubes,
trying to pump seashell-foam,
anemone waves.
I’m reminded of science class lectures,
the breeze of sharpened pencils & the radiance of insecurity.
“The Moon & the Ocean are connected. The current, gravity, and evolution, are all in debt to the sea.”
I heard it.
I was young and distracted
and probably angry at you
but I heard it.
The words fumble on chapped lips,
I clutched your fist.
You clutched back.
A little wave.
Yo.
Can’t we go back to that obnox point, where the sun is so golden w/ optimism, it’s insidiously aggressive?
Can’t we watch beach blondes trying to surf the same great big that has us holding our breath?
Can’t we dip our gashes and burns into the stingy salt that’s supposed to heal us?
Sing me a sea shanty,
the breathing tube provides a gnarly bass line.
Sing me a hymn.
We are not Homer,
lost in sea.
We are not Poseidon,
God Almighty.
We are not mermaids, krakens, or even sea turtles.
If we were,
you would continue.
If we were,
you would be loved, protected, & lively.
Things would just
be?
PART TWO
The echoing chorus of the siren’s ballad compelled her to escape her bondage.
She looked deep in the witch’s eyes as she traded her voice for land legs.
She dived so deeply, the world was shadowed by the dead of night, and only then did she bump into the family heirloom,
we been looking for
forever.
Death,
like dreams, like the sea,
is? the unavoidable trope.
It’s the slime tentacle
curling pulsating suckers
around narrative’s waist
down its throat,
into its trachea.
Sure,
I knew that there would be a day,
in which the ocean dried out, into sand dunes and craters,
as prophesied.
I worried about it too.
Late at night,
I would wonder,
how could the Universe continue w/o the curve of the seahorse,
or the bellowing cry of the blue whale?
Would the loss
be so great,
the living world would rename?
Would it become a new entity?
Would it
shake so violently,
combusting into nothingness?
Imagination deep and vast and rippling.
Our knees kissed the pews,
our wrists enveloped into one,
as I meditated this dried-out apocalypse.
Tideless, but there’s still the moon.
As silver as the crashing storm.
As cold as the first plunge.
As pocketed as the coral reef.
As marvelous, as divine, as spooky,
as insidious, as harrowing, as mysterious,
as symbolic, as majestic, as maternal,
as delightful, as vain, as spellbinding
As the deep blue sea.
PART THREE
ocean-less;
echoing caw;
cerulean dreams.
salt
on my tongue.
shanty,
on my lips.
toes
deep in mushy sand-castles,
with a moat and a pool and a tower.
we build
an adjacent sculpture,
decorated with pina-colada umbrellas,
and action figures.
we dig
so deep,
sand becomes moist and chestnut.
freckled
shoulders sprinkled with mud.
tiny
grains swishing in our spit.
this one —
this castle —
is the monarch’s.
we don’t look into the horizon.