You Told Me to Die, Now I Can't Think Straight.

I am giving it all that it's worth
To crack through the bones of a child's birth
And wondering how the fish manage to sleep at night
With all that moving 'round it just don't seem right
Now I'm reflecting on those things that you said to me
I guess they weren't that bad, but they truly bled me
I don't think there's anything I can do about it...

Now you will find me up against a wall
Now you will find me crawling down the hall
Now you will find me on the tile floor
Now you will find me at the beach, wondering...

How the fish manage to sleep at night?
With all that moving 'round it just don't seem right
I watch the waves loving the shore
And wish that I knew how to love more
Now you're trying to take me home
And I would rather be left alone.
You'll drag me back, and I'll comply
As you lovingly tell me that this time things will go right
But I just want to walk into the waves and see
How the fish manage to sleep at night
Turned upside down, or softly floating upright?
I want to be a heavy ball that doesn't bob for air
And not your girl with blue eyes and long hair

I'll never stop thinking, wondering
How the fish sleep down there
Then I wake up, gasping for air.

Ocean Floor

And they told us…
that his footsteps went straight into the water
and no one followed after
except a ghost called lust

And we wanted to follow
we wanted to know his name
why was he ashamed?
What didn’t he want us to know

They saw his body floating belly-up
and we could tell by his eyes
that he had seen the ocean floor

And then we knew
he lusted after what he didn’t know
and what he didn’t know was that lust followed him
into the water

And it pushed him under
and it made his eyes bulge
and it made him go further
even though his insides did explode
his arms still propelled him
to see the beast beneath
the great amorphous behemoth
that encompassed the underneath
of every drop of water
every counted sin
his eyes saw the droplets
evaporate beneath its fins

As it moved the world with each breath
beneath its body lied the place of death

The fires eating the flesh

We wanted to go into the water
and see the breathing floor
see how it pushed and pulled
the waves across the shore

See how it coaxed and taunted
the dreams of all man
see how it deeply wanted
to crawl upon the land.


This poem was also featured on Randomly Accessed Poetics on 04/01/2012

Stream of Consciousness for Dead People

Water moves in drips and waves

And it lives in valleys and caves

And it comes and goes and never stays

The layers, the liquid, the fog and haze 

And a million miles of coral blades 

That guides ethereal glowing wisps

of long lost prehistoric electric fish

That have eyes that pop and teeth that are hooked and brains that are blackish and concentrated into a disc

Of clearish languiousity and luminosity 

Enough to tell that the bottom of the ocean is a skin away from hell 

And a hair short of flesh from the press of the earth

In a jar, we all start and we end on a hook 

Through the eyes into the veins and ventricles and chambers til I feel

Like embers beneath your feet 

As you brave the waters 

Brimming with eviscerated reptiles 

And scented with dead roses that fell from the porches of people who live near the sea, in the dark

We don't think about roses in the dark.


Featured on SYWZine on April 11th.