deep water

My love is buried—caught up in the teeth of fear,

like so many things.

I thought nearer to you—fighting the empty space between us

(it knows, but do you?)

breathing underwater, i'm struggling to stay afloat. Kicking my legs, uselessly writhing.

Such a strange and willful dance.

It is your breath I want.

(This may or may not be a declaration of --------. )

the current tides me back under, and for a moment I forget.

For a moment the smoke in my lungs reminds me that I am only human—that this is only my humanity

manifesting itself, taking hold of me,

my own intensity eternally circling the drain

Sucking peels of water down with hungry power.

(It is raining outside.  It is raining inside this skin, my skin)

soaked with dewdrops, wet with raindrops.

mouth open wide

throat bare

head tilted back

to drink the wetness.

I drank water from a maple leaf this morning, and saw your face

reflected back

in my cupped hands.

My eyes looked out across the horizon

searching for a glimpse of something that would explain my rushing blood, shivers.

But I found only sleeping mountains.

I invoked their names and whispered another. Pieces, unraveling. (I surrender)

yet the electricity of the air shudders my skin with ecstasy--

point, counterpoint.

I am all earth and water--fingers, hands and eyes.

(there are places in me you have not yet seen, unexplored landscapes. earthquakes--)

The seething pit that swallows me whole

Endlessly,

hides full moons

cauterized with craters and caverns; a twisted gravity begs my release

beneath the calm sea—and that sea,

that sea is what you see

when you look at me.

(It is deep water)

Eyes--torn asunder.

Coyote teeth, snake bones. The sawed-off front leg of a deer, fur still attached in patches.

I sat with the coyote until it died, paralyzed.

Watched the life go out of its eyes,

wondering.

why the light goes out of our eyes, sometimes

even as blood still races life through our veins.

There is fog on my brain today, whiskey and red wine.

And lust-dreams keep me awake even in sleep

after the drive home, watching the yellow tracks blur on the highway

where I was the only one—swans and smoke, exhaling transcendent noise

reverberations and tobacco spiraling

spilling through the open space of the window.

Gas-light on.

then, stripping my stockings off and climbing into warmth.

Knowing sleep would not come.

even as I was dreaming, I wished it were true--

All the absurdities, confessions, faith.

Twisted elegiac logic of dreams

the soft feeling of your skin, unreal.

I contort myself to escape back into my dream; the rain tethers me.

Sometimes daylight is...

beating me over the head with a sharp stick.

A presence so full of absence.