RUBIES IN CRYSTAL
Does language hover between my nerve endings and the world, or is language my skin itself?
Sheath of feeling. Words groping to touch air.

Ink Ocean
In the burning ocean. Where plumes drag through the world's gloom. Swoop of feathers,
tarred. Or metal wings of dispersants. Gloss the rocks. You can't know where we go at
night. Or why the morning shines. Or the glimmer of gold before sunset. Relentless tidal
cycles. Let me tear at the crests and troughs. Go in. GO IN. Shiver. Sin. Dark water, grey
clouds. A rain of black in falls from the sky. Drips. Rips, slashes the wet heaving page.
Heat of sandpaper on fire. Burn the slick, salt water on fire. Coral crevices to hide.
Grottos like vowels. That invite. Come in, why don't you. Open. Open. Open. Arms
reach up. Seeds rain down. Wash the foam. Pray forests. Burning despair of illusion.
Fruit of veils to burn in. Salt washes open eyes. Deltas fog. They said GO IN.
.
In the night, I covered the words. Ink sheets. Sheets of the net of ink. Even I couldn't
read them anymore. I forgot the words, or they forgot me. Or I had to make them up
when you asked. They washed up from the black ocean, those words. Spun out of black
thread with black foam on a wave darkly. Ocean of words lapping on the beach,
reckoning.
.
Love isn't a silky bliss mist, more like the suture we sew our wounds with. The bloodied
scapula-feathers of angels.
.
Language summons us to speak.
Speaking cascades from depths
like wells of water overflowing.
Water eats away at order, rivers
erode their banks, deltas silt.
Our words silt in the paddies
of time, flooded with being.
.
...the ocean
tempests, salt
waves seep
from the rug
under my feet...
.
This strange sea birdsong on love.
.
Coded words. Words that conceal what they reveal, that hide their message in plain sight.
Invisible essence of the world. We are seeing what is invisible. The falling butterflies.
Our hands full of snow. Or white feathers in the heat. What do we hide behind? What
can we not forget? The way we perceive the lives we live are our realities.
Don't make it up.
When I lift the lip, water drops of me, my desk, the paper.
The salt burns.
.
We could be stars burning through the night
or phosphorescent fish glowing without starlight in the deep.
I am a fisherman of words, dragging my nets through your oceans, trawling your schools
of lexicons.
.
Love is the twine that binds our bones together.
Let the cold water fill our eyes until we swim in vision every night.
Oil swirls, coating.
.
Under sheets of sea in the frozen Atlantic we found each other.
You came in me like a wave of love.
My heart dances crill.
Whalesong of life.
Salt falls from feathers under this pen writing its words on the dark side of the moon
in the abandoned ocean beds.
Wet, heaving page.
Ink sheets.
Love is an aorta. A pounding surf of consonants like blood cells in the syrum falling from
rising wings.
It's a clash of shell, bone, hunger, physics, troughs and crests, blinding moments, the
sight of psychics.
Into. The explosion of who we are.
Our oily words. Crashing waters.
Choking the river streams. Fish bulging, dying.
We eat the world.
We go out each night and net the catch. Clean up the mess. Retain memories. Under
our gold skin, arms flap like wings of waves.
.
Let me flow over you while you drown me.
...in your love. in your love. in your love...
.
The dream of us opens.
I fold the ocean over my head. Spy on our dreams. Within dreams we liquify. We are gone
at night. Wings of sand on fire. The lovers' grotto, held together with crab claws, filament
of gold feather shafts. Gilded ink. Love wakes
you every day. Into
your
body, body
of words.
Seeping, lines of tar on the sands.
Crumple the paper of wind.
Find darkness; bring it in. IN.
An opencast poem, working from the exposed surface.
Taking images from what appears.
.
we anchor in the swells.
we are sky, sun, moon, stars, wet kisses of wind, sailing birds, flying fish, glittering ocean
we are nothing
we will wash away
drops in the ocean
without memory
nets of words
dissolving
knowing
this strange song of
love loves
through us...
love loves
through us...
love loves
through us...




Perhaps there were different ways of understanding, parallel paths of interpretation and it was impossible to pick which was more real.
First one, and then the other seemed likely.But, no, it was more like a kaleidoscope of turbulent thoughts and chaotic feelings.
Perhaps they were lassos you were flinging from each hand, sometimes they swung wildly divergently, sometimes they entangled.The problem was there was no strategy, or even a map of where we were.
Or probably you didn't swing anything and the parallel ways of understanding were the metaphor I was most comfortable with.Or when I lay at the beach on the hot day imagining Ferris wheels of kaleidoscopes where everything impinged on everything else.
I couldn't decide, on the long walk grocery shopping that day which path more accurately represented your feelings, or mine, or what happened.
Nothing made sense.But what was the truth?
What is truth?Parallel paths; I can't decide which.
Rather, multiple lines like tangled tackle.One interpretation, the cavalier one, you'd prefer; the other a deeper more vulnerable one you'd prefer hidden.