5.2.12

water/the ship/the pearl revisited

I.
Water is made of light;
the atmosphere spoils and congeals,
and drags sunbeams down
as it falls to the ocean.

II.
Ships and their victories stay above the water, while if all goes well the pearl stays below. If the pearl and the ship ever meet, it is a victory for the ship and a travesty for the pearl.

III.
The ocean is the heart of the earth.
Full of waste with blood like water,
it pumps life to its limbs.
Watersheds rise and hurricanes come,
but still the sea moves.

IV.
Three lines written near a tidepool:
Movement, bodies crash
The ocean, the salt, the sand
Clarity, cut, light

V.
An old folktale:
two lovers, a flood
between stars.
The cowherd prays.
The princess weaves.
The magpies bring
a bridge; “we
can give you
just one night.”

VI.
The ship tears the pearl from its home. Ships are to the moon as pearls are to the ocean; ships gather pearls, and upon the whim of the moon, the water moves.

VII.
If I am the ocean then
you are the moon and
I’m constantly moved by
the phases of you.

VIII.
Tsunami:
the wave
does not break
‘til it cannot move.

IX.
You were furious,
you were boiling;
you left me
with naught but salt.

X.
the moon gathers the tide and, upon the whim of the ship, the pearl moves.

2 comments:

Risingsympathy said...

We are afraid of the elements. Alleged stardust coats and fills our insides, and all but water and trillions of pieces of air and earth and other beings within us. Hordes of beings and waters within us. The angel can't cry with no water for tears, and diving for pearls is the semen the angel deposits. Spilled on the guts of the earth. See the creek as it moves with perfection, the most effective form of chaos. See the sides of the triangle, as the man from Miletus cries a lull to the sea. Smoke the sea. Follow the sea as it flows like your gaze on my hands, like your lips past my cheek. Nest with the angel in the cold and the dark, far away from the sun, in the depths where the pressure makes pearls of perfection. Grab the darkness made liquid and breathe deeply, for from water we hail and through water we like and we drink and we piss and we catalyze to the brink of dissolving. Replace me with firewater, one hundred and four and a half degrees aflame, and the water will leave your veins. Push and pull, while legs tangle and saltwater seeps from the body, mixing like spit and like lovewater. Mix my waters with the sea, and feel the pearl reborn in me, only to poison my words with ideas compressed. Not like a pearl, my blossom my sweet synergy, more like a wisp. More like a lash like a string like a whip for my sleep. Like a particle unseen. Become my unseen, steep touch on my nerves until vapors and boils unify.

Flip the switch, run the tap, make it rain in the hands of the ones that detain. Sail the reasons and thoughts, see what fabrics you make from the movement within. Water is more like a variable peace.

A. said...

Never borrow, just steal. Take whatever you want, less the ever.