A god-shaped hole
filled with suffering.
Go ahead,
wear it around your neck
as if you’re entitled
to the gleam of others’ tears,
as if your own
microscopic irritations
could so entomb the light.
Tell yourself the oysters
sleep easy in their beds,
that no pea could keep
such plebians from
a sound sleep,
& that it’s absurd
to see a world of pain
Lightning roots deep into the sand,
donning an instant sheath of glass:
a seemingly pointless exercise in self-glove.
Clap of thunder.
Could it be, though, that radiance tires of itself?
Nowhere in the alleged blackness of space
is there any relief from the ticking,
pulsing, clusterfucks of stars
except on cold planets.
Who can blame lightning
for burrowing in like a tick?
Even we humans, full of darkness as we are,
go on pilgrimage to the ocean,
dream of girls with gills,
get buried up to our necks in sand
or swim with porpoises, whose
not friends and family
it is the river and the sea
who give me the best conversation
and as good an account of the particular sand
that I could desire
so sure and well worn
High tide,
the ocean shifts gears…
withdrawing sand
Dressed for dinner, she
leaves out water for the crows
in her coat and mask
Low hangs a boiled moon
fingers stick up through the sand
farewell to low tides
No one notices
much about anything
so I think I'm safe
Dry dirt tossed over
my blind brain at mid-evening
three layers of black
Wakizashi
behind glass at the museum
whose hand drew it last?
Little girl chases
She is translucent, undaunted in her courage to spike
the ball of conversation one more time
She cannot ignore what she knows, but moves forward anyway.
Nearly six feet tall, she is grounded by the reality of her own disease.
“Not yet,” she cries, “I am not ready for the fall” and takes one more chance
And winning the game herself
She does not know the meaning of the word “teammate”
In her desire to score,
For there is only one moment left
Which is now, nonetheless
What battle can she ferry through
The sand burning her skin as she goes.
Awkward, alive, ambitious
No sickness can stop her drive
Everyone knows but her
She fights to stay illumined
A child holding out, crying out,
Lantern dying, tightly clutched,
The endless night does fast approach;
They fear what lies beyond that ghostly veil.
Fighting the will to disappear
Among the countless grains of sand
Crashing waves against a bunker still
As they do see no more, no more.
Riddled with holes in memories yet to be;
Life flowing from every scratch,
Every fleeting moment passing through,
As the light within does slowly dim.
For what had they held for?
To feel the wind, to see the stars once more?
Perhaps. But that matters little now.
The darkness comes, the darkness comes.
Is every grain of sand
Different from the other?
I do not know.
Is every drop of water
Different from the other?
I do not know.
But I do know
That every snowflake
Is different from the other
Just as every man differs from the other.
How like snowflakes are we!
Both appear from nowhere
But from somewhere the same
Falling, falling we come down
Lying on a rock or in a glacier
Or on the riverbank here
weed that hides rock
white deceiving chalk
could crumble under dead pine
i would risk those cliffs down to sea
white first
my eyes have greeted you
my tongue and lips felt your chalk white
no kiss that touch
i have come from algier
my son
the heat is here still
with us
where boats stop
my son dead in white cunt sand
could scream white dust
i can smell your scream marseille
On the boardwalk
old men take off their hats
& dream of the city, once theirs,
calling the sea in.
The wind pushes
into the sweat
of a woman a yard wide at the hips,
into the smells
of hotdogs & warm beer
& across sand
a pale spider makes false rushes
at a string trailed
from the fingers of a kid
who is watching a girl's thighs
open as softly
as a clam mined by the sun.
I would sing a song
but I have no words
I would hum a tune
but I have no melody
success
like grains of brown sand
at the sea-shore
slips through my nerveless fingers
the world
has not time
even to laugh.
I walk on sand
and think to join
the gulls. We'll seek
a route across waves,
leaving behind
so many troubles.
The dory-boatmen
launch through surf,
eyes picking their way
through rocks ahead.