THE

ARRIVES

EPHISTEMI—

The sea is high again today.

A little debris roils up from the deep.

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9

THE TELLER4

A CLEARING7

PILGRIMAGE9

SNIPPETS OF FEAR AND HAPPINESS15

A BLESSING IN THE GUISE17

BLUE AND RED: A Sulfuric Transmission

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THE OCEAN ARRIVES23

BEACH24

DEFLECTION28

THE END OF WONDER29

IN THE AIR30

EVOCATION33

FROM BOAT TO PIER35

DEIFICATION38

AS THE SUN EXPLODES UNDER WATER41

VIOLET IN THE WAKE42

THE TELLER

I promise I won’t give any answers. I promise I don’t know any answers.

Instead I tell you balloon. I tell you beach.Mount Olympus is too high,the ocean goes too low.I don’t knowwhat the sailors set out to sail for.Start hard and fast—finishhard, sharpenyour teethboardwalk splinters—

…all I could think was that I needed tunafish and that this stuff tastes like flounder…They welcomed me to the town as if I had lived there before.

I tell you fire. I tell you fly.

When I take off my red hat everything breathes.

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A CLEARING

We boarded a small ship at sundown,set sail acrossthe smog of backlog.What memory!—the tycoon, the staleroll, alwaysthe wrong word burning under the sun.A wrong lookand the dog refuses to sitever again.

If only all cameraswere bakers of candorthen the sunwould be in the seaand we couldwalk a clear day on it.

High winds blister the water—salt flails, raspinggrain against grain—a rocket thrusts upwardlifts with itall the sandthat had settled into a blind.

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PILGRIMAGE

It was curiosity drove me restlessly deep-sea down to seewhat humans are not. Those

travelogues contain faint latitudes, shriveled impressions, successes

having settled into a strangle. —A looking into begins. A looking outside. A looking bowel-deep down into.

Wearing graceless goggles I see pieces shift, shifting eyes. I fit myself

with a divine helmet. I touch the infinite night at ocean’s bottom

where rocks crag up. Abstract viscosity causes me

adaptation to darkness and plants cling always to my arms. I swallow—

By day I measure evolution by the length of my reach salt on my tongue, salt

contains me. I build a corner. Incrementally I rise, I lead—fish

to matter. Sun scatters its white light whorl through each fold in the water

simultaneously illuminating each moment located cast and freed.

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Ephistemi—

13

The sea is high again today.

A little debris roils up from the deep.

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SNIPPETS OF FEAR AND HAPPINESS

What makes you scared? queried the faery.

What makes you happy? asked the troll.

Boats, I said. And infinite ocean.

* *

There was never a bridge.There was always a bridge.Don’t look down.The sun, too, is too bright.

* *

Dear father, Thank you for teaching me to fish.I don’t remember who I was before this.

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A BLESSING IN THE GUISE

There was an effort to find the bones and ricebut the cider wasn’t rightand socks kept occurring.

There was a malicious windand an undertow. A bird had troubleflying. Feet broke off of statues.

Sweat dripped down the arcs of the planetfrom one pole to another. Yet—the coal in the medicine chest

insisted on turning to goldboth itself and all of its surroundings.

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BLUE AND RED: A Sulfuric Transmission

One day in the far-too-blue water in Attic throatiness in loose lilts he told truth. And one day brimstone inland,

The lip is essential. And the teeth, upper deck. Blow. –A tempest tempting demons out from deep in the lungs— Feel it toes up as you resist the sirens and just let

the barn burn. The orangest story illuminates even the sun. A sulfur mound west of the hotel casts yellow over

the streets. The teeth, upper deck. Blow—

Let each infinite crystal catch in the wind to remind of fate. Best to pronounce it from the back of the throat, get the whole

body into it, time none lest speech be mere homily and no god listen.

A cross topped with a triangle appears in star formation, the sky emitting song and water-blue flame, barns burning inland, land becomes

magmatic, viscous. Red flood casts emergent spell into home uprooted—revised by teeth lip wind repeating.

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THE OCEAN ARRIVES

The days are compact, the hallway rapid—richin association, in smokingin Big Baby! Am not!, in blood-red shag,in I. feel. sick. What heavyimpressionism! Appleseedsclack in a dust storm’s whirl—

The oneironaut arrives, thank god. Looks,locates the blue meaning from wakinglife: picnic and potato salad, prince, the kindwith skin, sepia-toned.

Standing at the edge of a cliff, water below,a man overweight, purpose full in stomach,truck tire blows on a desert road—old,a Chinese unicorn, ashen, a numberwith no oranges to represent. Nolonger wants to be a journalist for voodoo priests.

The ocean is not infinite! It’s dusk-colored, choppy,ardent, real.—Am not.—About-face!—crack open a compass, split a cigaretteopen into wine-aroma, gold—look,salt in the shag, blue rain in strangeresolution. Yellow raincoat blursin a water-drop, ghost-blob in a photograph—

BEACH

Speak now because I speakSee because I seeRise now and prosper—flourish

Virtue—what is it?The weather sings todayThe beach fallsThe world sleeps offThe door opens and the sister laughs

A museum is on the roadYou don’t, of course, see itYou’ve lost your dogYou’ve lost your catYou’ve lost your eyes

Cursing doesn’t helpThose words are not goodAre you good?Speak now

Slide with medown silver night—down smart blade—Strikewhere there is no timebut only through slicing—

Summer’s gone now—and the old-fashioned housewhere I dreamedI sifted nickels from sand

Heaven is what waitsto be seen until you see it

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DEFLECTION

Paint me a picture of war

an action picture

pretty with yellow and gray hues

an ocean violent

fighting off bombs in the background

but keep it two-dimensional

and comprehensible

only when translated

from another language.

Obidiomenefilinomacanovanda.

An avocado falls from a tree.

An old man stops fighting his knee.

A girl lifts up her skirt.

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THE END OF WONDER

what is given against disenchantment, flat beaching—that hasn’t been perfected yet The water is adulterated—aging, aguing lumps, and distance from sun-skin and eyeswide How long can you hold your breath under Thereis work to be done in the ceremony of desk and keysclattering See how many somersaults you can do withoutcoming up The pleasure of contortion loses measure inthe funnel of days piling up into newspapers The scalewas invented on a lilypad, after the last ginger housewhere the breadcrumbs dissolve

IN THE AIR

Sleep there, think there.Blood in water in sky.

Flora slowly grows throughconcrete

there.

The naturalist declared, Fauna is connected to the octopusby way of seed and ink unfurling

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EVOCATION

She said it. I find youinspiring. I find you watery find you distant and pointy— find—green brush

goes bluish and softer when (we) go underwater together—breathe there, like fishthrough our skins—(we)

paint us into fluorescence in the deep(we) fluid-moving plants— a motion— —or from the pier we could just lookat the water lapping at sticks and rocks,darkening their curt surfaces— —did you know the moonscooped itself outof the ocean floor? Why don’t we do that?

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FROM BOAT TO PIER

A jumble of exuberance and discontent, Charybdis of color,bikinied bodies flank the pier, distracting seacreatures from hunt and social

dallying among their kind. It’s come time for tide to riseelusively but with vigor. An intricacy of hand/eye furtively turns up, craft unnoticeable in simply looking. There is

gutting involved in learninghow to tell a story to a child about ethnicity and why some sea animals areiridescent with life, others afflicted with abyss.

Jail a letter that doesn’t speak its purpose clearly, call itkoan, call it haiku, call it epigraph, call it mittensloose. A letter from boat to pier should specify its intentions to

mother or to capture. And then expose eachnuance between two given poles. Oval, ovular,ovulation. The transit from one to another is key to root-digging and fine

proliferation of a deep genealogy. The edge-tornquilt speaks volumes on legacy and what wereally mean to do when we research

salinity in what’s left of the ocean.To dissolve or not tounder circumstances of atomic tension hails a

voice from over the pier and water that askswhy we do this, why we let some things die and force others to livexenophobically, proffering brute allergy without

yen to make parallel lines meet kindly in a grocery store—thatzoo of a billion passions and passivities.

DEIFICATION

The bar’s under water

the water, duress

shoulders ache where

pilgrims are building

and skirts fly—

Nobody

is getting married today

A sperm whale

has beached

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AS THE SUN EXPLODES UNDER WATER

Is it possible not to get caught and pulled back— Wegot sledge we got hammer we got fire and wiles and a train full of ethanolheading toward a fantastic boulder planted by wolves withhungry searching teeth and whim.

We with wolf ’s fire can dissolve a wall.

*

Post-go deeply we see squid in the jellyfish reflected in rearview—

coming to know thyself coming to know coming to

Omphalotic trespass

a self many disparate

images reflected in waking

VIOLET IN THE WAKE

What a picturesque bazaar the place becomes.The walls thin.The second hands shiftsred light to violet over the bedcover.

Listen closely.The walls whisper.A dog barks and ocean’swave dissolves into audience.A creature cracks out of the bedpost:“I am a god, a phoenix, a raven,rabbit’s foot, lock of hair, tarot, the future—” Night turns into day. The sunshines. Stories of birds and godsand those of giants bound relentlessly through the clouds.

The day is compact,its hallway deepened,the ocean and its slow wavesripe matter for a new cycleto begin its crimson burn in the oldest amphitheater.

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