When journeying somewhere

You’ve never been,

Keep a catalog of all of your sins.

And when meeting new people,

Remember not to tell them

Of what you thought about doing at midnight last month.

For shells take years to create and

Afternoons to break,

And then flesh gets sunburned

Rather quickly.

What I suggest is this:

Remember your innocence, and feign it all day. Once night falls and springs, convince them all that you are a king whose feet never touch the ground, whose doubt never makes a sound, and then retire to your chambers to wait for tomorrow.

Red splashes on a tranquil sea

With dangerous undercurrents

Beneath.

There are ducks on the surface

Diving for morsels,

Just something to eat.

One with his beak under the

Shimmer

With a grin, working lazily for his

Dinner.

---

I pray to God that he is a good

Swimmer.

We were all born in this lake,

Wandering out, crawling and

Covered in amniotic fluid

And gasping for air.

And then pulled up into parents’ arms.

They fling us back in order to

“Learn how to swim.”

And if we survive,

And drip back out,

We’re one year older.

Lather, rinse, repeat

And we’re teenagers slathered

In hormones and atomic acne

Bombs.

We have our first kiss on a boat

Or under the dock,

And later we ask why we wanted it,

As we step back on to dry land,

Smelling like alcohol and cigarettes

At 21

With an addiction to escaping.

But when we stop growing,

We watch the lake pull our friends and family

Back in.

Once their eyebrows are under,

We’re allowed to say goodbye.

And only when we dunk our heads deeper than ever before,

Are we allowed to say hello again.

Some advice for when you shatter your life to pieces:

 

1. Panic.
   1. Whatever happens, throw a fit that would make the Greek gods proud.
2. Beg for another chance.
   1. Even if you have to get down your knees and cry.
3. Return to your old habits.
   1. If they’ve worked this far, they’ll work again.
4. Make all the same mistakes as quickly as possible.
   1. Self-explanatory.

As I send myself off

From tombstone to tombstone,

I can only see your face

Somewhere in between.

Flowering like you forgot something,

Quickly and unashamed.

---

I’m sorry

I have no fix

For feelings that

Float on our minds

Like gasoline,

Ready to ignite at any

Sneeze of fire.

---

But honestly,

You probably sneeze beautifully.

I miss the sea

Already.

She was something I’d never seen

Nor heard or been

So in love with.

I thought that maybe, just maybe

She would run with me,

Keep me company,

But as everybody knows,

You can’t walk a straight line when someone pushes you wrong.

Her current pulled my ankles down and under

The sand and the Sea and thought of me

When I turned to leave,

Not knowing when we’ll meet

Another time.

I jumped overboard and into the universe today.

Something I said I’d never do;

Enter into the unknown

Instead of staying with what I knew.

And from the depths of outer space,

I found a barracuda,

Screaming my name

As he jumped between nebulous gas clouds.

I’ll never forgive what he said,

But I can’t seem to say what it was.

For he had a fishy way of pronouncing his

Vowels.

Don’t worry though,

I’ll figure it out.

Like ripples on the water,

I wavered when she waved.

Suddenly stars were much brighter,

And the moon flew higher

And passed the sun in distance and light,

Becoming the center of the solar system,

Which scientists now admit is a lunar system.

But everything is subject to change.

Your fingers tendril within my mind

Trace across the tragic crevasses on his face

As we wait at the station,

Bathed in light and

Grace.

Every arrival, door swings open,

Steam from the engine perspiring by

Those impatient hopeful,

For just an ounce of change.

Why does life become boring?

Don’t be startled by the dog barking,

Coins falling, shuffling, shaking, swearing,

And sweating  is normal under

Pressures such as these.

Have you run your lines twice over

In your sweet head? Don’t forget to smile.

The stage you stand on,

The light in which you bathe

Is visible for miles,

For all to see

Your every move,

Through bus station window panes.

You carry so gently the burden of recognition,

When you brush cool black hairs from

Your brilliant eyes

And stable your mind with steel support beams you found

In the corners.