Two Sides to the Surface of the Sea
We learned how to swim before we could walk and I always preferred to use my hands to move, holding my breath and savouring the bubble of air in my lungs lasting just long enough.
Now that sense of navigation doesn't serve so well for nautical feats but it keeps me out of the deep. Considering my compass was set to your turned-off beacon, I am now a castaway.
How long it's been since I've seen stars so clearly, although I realize I am peering through a film and as always it's like my brain is starving for oxygen! They are ushers of the universal elements, these little twinklers. As guides they are too far away for a biped.
The more I drink of you the thirstier I feel, the more I need to refer to the exterior world. I've found a fountain, a reservoir of memory, depraved and debauched, especially now that there's not a drop of you left...My tentacles reach out, a reptilian instinct flaring, limbic system wavering like a pendulum, body in a toxic shock, destined to swing back, programmed to hunt you through the remnants.
The hair of a jelly fish that is baking in the sun, quivering, destined to die, abandoned by the sea, still stings.
I've been straining for that test of strength, struggling against the tide as the waves of time take you farther and farther from my shores.
A rat on a raft in a storm in what serves as a crocodile's dorm.
The Herod's of circumstance force us in baskets to ride oblivious of the current, save for the chance observation of lilies and thorns to snag our flesh before we get sucked under.
Whether to wear ourselves down, fighting gravity and time, wearing concrete boots, paddling towards delirium, chasing the dying light at a surface we can barely see through a foggy pair of goggles in an underworld full of smothering laughing jackals and blubbering drunks, full of megalomaniacal kings choking on their own blood, sinking ever so slightly, then dropping like anchors, just as they seize the throne in a coup d'etat, just as they ruin themselves before their third birthday, vassals licking salt and stealing fish, just to escape the bigger one that's eating them. Whether this is a choice, whether-
They are diving for diamonds, searching for submarines in what is everywhere enemy territory.
They say that what goes up must come down. The opposite is not necessarily true.
Take me to the place where I can bathe in your listless affection, where the moon dips its face in the canyon and we sleep, one organism, under a blanket of mollusks. I will wrap you in seaweed and call you my water baby. But then I will want you to assure me there's no bottom or top, no meniscus or major highway. I will want you to tell lies, pretending that I cannot make out what you're saying when I suppose I orient quite aptly alone after all. I can't hear. I see only bubbles. The viscosity causes illusions and space bends like light. We are not communicating as separates. We are not communicating. Sky and sea are twin sisters caught between sitting on your knee or cuddling under your armpit. But which? Our pupils are a mirror of our minds and your pupils harpoon me with their vacancy. I am suspicious there is something else behind. My obsession with your movement locks me onto you like a hook. There is no predator amphibian or broken shell clam, just me. Somehow I fear my own aggression could lead into a trap of my own undoing. There is just a seamless flow of rhythm, but I am at one edge, you are on the other. What creates a vacuum in one space is enough to crush a man or pull him apart.
I want to enclothe a slipperiness of skin, where the sweat just slides off my back and I can draw myself slowly to you, where your breath beads against the roof of my mouth, where we share air and there is enough to well up inside us, spurting out our nostrils, where we can be carried into the wharf and not dash our ribs against the rocks or raging rapids. Afterwards, we can shake off the sand. My heart would be like a pool of dancing minnows and your smile would set them free to go coursing through my veins, in an alternate dimension.
Instead of floating I've been forced to dry up the stains since time washes away all the rain and I can't remember exactly what happened before the thought of us went down the storm sewers but that was a long time ago when there were many fish in the sea, before someone let the hate leak in.
© Copyright Sir Barrett 2006
Poetry
Now that sense of navigation doesn't serve so well for nautical feats but it keeps me out of the deep. Considering my compass was set to your turned-off beacon, I am now a castaway.
How long it's been since I've seen stars so clearly, although I realize I am peering through a film and as always it's like my brain is starving for oxygen! They are ushers of the universal elements, these little twinklers. As guides they are too far away for a biped.
The more I drink of you the thirstier I feel, the more I need to refer to the exterior world. I've found a fountain, a reservoir of memory, depraved and debauched, especially now that there's not a drop of you left...My tentacles reach out, a reptilian instinct flaring, limbic system wavering like a pendulum, body in a toxic shock, destined to swing back, programmed to hunt you through the remnants.
The hair of a jelly fish that is baking in the sun, quivering, destined to die, abandoned by the sea, still stings.
I've been straining for that test of strength, struggling against the tide as the waves of time take you farther and farther from my shores.
A rat on a raft in a storm in what serves as a crocodile's dorm.
The Herod's of circumstance force us in baskets to ride oblivious of the current, save for the chance observation of lilies and thorns to snag our flesh before we get sucked under.
Whether to wear ourselves down, fighting gravity and time, wearing concrete boots, paddling towards delirium, chasing the dying light at a surface we can barely see through a foggy pair of goggles in an underworld full of smothering laughing jackals and blubbering drunks, full of megalomaniacal kings choking on their own blood, sinking ever so slightly, then dropping like anchors, just as they seize the throne in a coup d'etat, just as they ruin themselves before their third birthday, vassals licking salt and stealing fish, just to escape the bigger one that's eating them. Whether this is a choice, whether-
They are diving for diamonds, searching for submarines in what is everywhere enemy territory.
They say that what goes up must come down. The opposite is not necessarily true.
Take me to the place where I can bathe in your listless affection, where the moon dips its face in the canyon and we sleep, one organism, under a blanket of mollusks. I will wrap you in seaweed and call you my water baby. But then I will want you to assure me there's no bottom or top, no meniscus or major highway. I will want you to tell lies, pretending that I cannot make out what you're saying when I suppose I orient quite aptly alone after all. I can't hear. I see only bubbles. The viscosity causes illusions and space bends like light. We are not communicating as separates. We are not communicating. Sky and sea are twin sisters caught between sitting on your knee or cuddling under your armpit. But which? Our pupils are a mirror of our minds and your pupils harpoon me with their vacancy. I am suspicious there is something else behind. My obsession with your movement locks me onto you like a hook. There is no predator amphibian or broken shell clam, just me. Somehow I fear my own aggression could lead into a trap of my own undoing. There is just a seamless flow of rhythm, but I am at one edge, you are on the other. What creates a vacuum in one space is enough to crush a man or pull him apart.
I want to enclothe a slipperiness of skin, where the sweat just slides off my back and I can draw myself slowly to you, where your breath beads against the roof of my mouth, where we share air and there is enough to well up inside us, spurting out our nostrils, where we can be carried into the wharf and not dash our ribs against the rocks or raging rapids. Afterwards, we can shake off the sand. My heart would be like a pool of dancing minnows and your smile would set them free to go coursing through my veins, in an alternate dimension.
Instead of floating I've been forced to dry up the stains since time washes away all the rain and I can't remember exactly what happened before the thought of us went down the storm sewers but that was a long time ago when there were many fish in the sea, before someone let the hate leak in.
© Copyright Sir Barrett 2006
Poetry
posted by sirbarrett at 9:58 p.m.
4 Comments:
as a child i was enamoured of namor, the sub mariner. i first came across him in a fantastic four comic book but of course he was much older than the silver age of comics. he went right back to the golden age.
but enough of my childhood memories and as much as i still love comics, enough of comics.
this though, made me think of mermen and mermaids but more than that i found it both romantic and tender and, just a little, erotic.
You guys are amazing with your poetry. I am unable to write decent poetry, however I can enjoy it!
this is lovely. you are a great poet.
i don't know what to say, it is so moving.
xxxxx
that was beautifully written.
i can't swim though.
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