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'Ink Ocean'
In the burning ocean.
Plumes drag through the world's gloom.
Swoop of feathers, tarred.
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 at sunset.
Relentless tidal cycles.
Let me tear at the crests and troughs.
Go in. GO IN. Shiver. Sin.
A black rain falls.
Drips. Rips the wet, heaving page.
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 breathing forests.
Burning despair of illusion.
Veils of sea fruit drift, lifeless spumes.
Salt water stings open eyes.
Deltas fog. They said:
GO IN.
In the night, I covered the words.
Ink sheets. Nets of ink, trawling.
I couldn't read them anymore.
I forgot the words,
or they forgot me.
Or I made them up when you asked.
They washed up from the black ocean, these words.
Spun out of black foam
on a wave darkly.
An ocean of words lapping on the beach
reckoning.
Love is not a silky bliss mist,
more like the sutures we sew our wounds with.
The bloodied scapula feathers of angels.
An ocean of language summons us to speak.
Speaking cascades from depths
where underwater springs feed marine streams.
The relentless caress of water
dissolves shores, rocks, islands.
Our words silt
in the deltas of time;
flooded with being.
In the intensity of sun, wind, salt,
the tilting, rotating earth;
marine streams swim round the globe.
The massive Gulf Stream.
Sticky globs, blackened crill, dying shrimp,
the disappearing dolphins.
Oil and gas-eating bacteria,
until glutted, unable to.
Oil-coated words, coded suffering.
Falling birds. Our hands full of tar.
The lure of black gold, black blood siphoned,
deeper than soil, sand, filling the veins of our.
Our.
What do we hide behind?
What can we not forget?
The way we perceive our lives are our realities.
Don't make it up.
Let cold salt water wash our eyes until we swim in vision.
Water drops on me, my desk, the paper,
spots of crude oil slide into notes
singing songs of us.
Waves seep from the rug under my feet.
This strange seabird song of love.
We could be stars burning through the night.
Or phosphorescent fish glowing
without starlight in the deep.
Love is the twine
that binds our bones.
Under sheets of sea in the frozen Atlantic
we found each other.
You came in me like a wave of love.
My heart dances still. Sea song of life.
Do we lie in seabeds
on the dark side of the moon
under inked stars?
Love is an aorta.
A pounding surf of consonants.
Like a serum of blood falling
from rising wings.
A clash of shell, bone, metal, physics, hunger,
crests and troughs, blinding moments,
the sight of psychics.
Into. Explosions of who we are.
We choke the waters.
Fish bulging, dying.
We eat the world.
We go out each day, net the catch.
Clean up the mess. Retain memories
under our gold skin.
Arms flapping, wings of waves.
Let me flow over you
while you drown me
in your love
in your love
I fold the sea over us. Spy on our dreams.
At night, we hide.
Spinning whirlpools of sand
on the seafloor.
Our 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.
Find darkness; bring it in.
Find light; bring it in.
IN.
Lines of tar litter the beach.
Crumple the inked paper of wind.
An opencast poem, working from the
exposed surfaces.
Stripping images from what appears.
we anchor in the swells
we are sky, sun, moon, stars,
wet kisses of wind,
flying fish, sailing birds, glittering ocean
we are nothing
nothing
we will wash away
without memory
drops in the ocean
nets of words dissolving
only perhaps
knowing
the song singing
love loves through us...