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.

She stepped among the stars

Searching for shark’s teeth.

Starting on the North shore, now there’s water up to her eyes.

She always said

The freshest teeth

Fall out inside the waves,

And make their way

Back out to sea

Before they crumble like in my dreams

Where she leaves me

Standing on the beach of shattered glass

With vast,

Vast distances to go.

You are the sand.

Molecules.

Small bits.

Sturdy as stone,

Yet you crumble under the feet of each and every tourist that crushes you for holiday sport on sunny days.

One day a castle,

Gloriously and meticulously

Built.

The next a pit,

Sharp edged,

And sat in by children and overweight mothers without suntans.

You are not one of them,

Yet you are made one with them

When they bury their youngest brother and laugh, and he laughs too, and you’re in his hair and then his mouth, and then you feel more separated from yourself than ever.

I am sick

From the longer days

And singing with smoke in my lungs.

I wrap myself in cocoons

Of recovery and pray to my breath

To come in easily,

From across the room.

You’re thinking about that tree

Again.

She’s sitting there

Fogged by memory,

With her hair done up lazy and loose.

Her,

Sitting on the blanket you bought,

Meant for the beach but you couldn’t find

A picnic pattern at the thrift store.

She

Made sandwiches,

The best you’ve ever had because you never tasted them again.

You’re worried she will fade with time,

So you lay in bed with the blanket stained by mayonnaise

And force her figure deep

Into the strands of your mind and

Try to find her in your dreams.

Something has shifted inside of my soul,

And somewhere a worm is thinking of moles

That dig in the earth and lay waste to homes

Created with care and sea green foam.

But I am neither flightless bird nor mole with purpose.

I am man with slow up and down changing speed days wrapped in weeks of something I’m not quite sure exists like creative waves.  Or outer space.

I cannot feel it,

It does not exist.

I cannot eat it,

I don’t yet wish

to know what’s real.

I awoke on the shore

With the fish crawling out

On their brand new arms and legs.

 

They gawked at me and

Stopped to see me cry.

 

Then continued.

 

They soon discovered concrete,

And I sat in the sands,

The sins of their origin

Story, as they erected

Their monuments to the clouds.

 

When one came to me,

Cracked open a book.

And read me his story,

Born from his knowledge of drowning,

Of breathing water for so long,

 

He felt like he’d lost his past.

 

Beginning at the start, I listened

As the sand went out to sea,

He wept ink onto pages as my

Stolen stone visage feigned

Observation.

 

I’m sorry you feel lost,

But I cannot move.

 

____

 

Something about eating algae,

And being an egg surrounded by brothers and sisters

Unthinking.

 

He told me of his changing pains

And the torturously slow growth of

Arms.

 

Astounded at their length

Fins with phalanges,

Carpals on carps,

Can you imagine?

 

I said I could,

I’d seen it all,

But my language passed

Down onto the beach

Like spoiled manna

The next day.

 

He said I looked quite sad,

Sitting, weathered by the sands

Of time and of the sea,

 

And slunk off to the water

Without his gills.

However many days I spent waking up, my father would be awake already, before the dawn came rushing down over the hills which bracketed our house, dancing through the blades of grass, up into the trees, and finally resting -stretching out arms and legs in tiny tendrils – on my bedroom floor.

———–

Lasting, fasting

From love for 40 days,

 

Until the clouds all cleared,

Crested the edges of the sky,

 

And God came down

On a fiery horse, calling

 

My name which I could not hear.

God sounds like thunder,

 

And I sound like rain.

———–\

I dropped the needle on your record today.

It skipped and jumped, and pulled my heart from my chest.

And out into the world of anger swords and violent words,

 

Its eyes grew wide.

Astonishment like apple trees breeding oranges, and mothers oiling

Door-hinges which squeak and scare me in the

Dark.

 

You fell out of my speakers today, crumpled up like those last

Letters I wrote. Like the birthday card I bought and couldn’t send.

Do you still break plates?

 

Do you still call, sobbing, ‘help me’?

Do you still tear plants from neighborhood gardens?

Do you still have to scrape me from your shadow each morning?

Do you still –

 

“How’s Oklahoma?”