Oceanist
'And what if we ate Lions?'
In the dead zone what survives is nothing
and jellyfish, somehow.
Yet its' ghosts keep deaths' place,
water does not hold to earth.
We know what water does.
Catostylus Mosaicus, cnidarian, remain,
gelatinous mushroom catastrophes
translucent and glittering as their difficult, untraceable names
haunting extinguished waters.
'If we tore mile long rakes through Sahara fields,
in an indiscriminate feast of nonsense
tangling Mufasa, Puma, Jaguarondi,
like loose hairs 'round steel prongs?'
We know what water does.
We each cast the stone
of our bodies upon the same transient wave
of a different name, each time, repeatedly, cyclically,
a wave which drinks us, flings us back to shore, teaching
patience as a gasping,
between inevitable thirst
rising to be quenched with stone.
as knowing
god as mirror,
mirror as knowing
I have never properly looked myself in the eye.
In the dead zone what grows is nothing
yet water does not hold to sand or earth.
so we must admit these places haunted
with misspent will, the dark waters cupping no oxygen
as mercury beads like silver blood,
and hovering holds the wounded place.
'If we piled unwanted carcasses atop
random sand drifts where the air is thick as fire
to rot and feed on clay.'
'If the carcasses became mountains,
If all the Disney children
piled all the plush stuffed animals,
excepting the sleeping Lion,
and cast a little chant, so the dolls began to die,
and the death was too great for the earth to swallow,
and the death was too great for the air
to continue breathing.'
What remains is;
names we can not pronounce-
Catostylus, Mosaicus, cnidarian.
unreflective stillness,
the memory of trust,
a reticent eye closing.
thirst.
'Would we cast our thoughts like a baited, bobbing
line away from choking places,
and feast on Lions,
clinking and spilling overfull goblets
atop our fortress of sand,
priding ourselves glorious sovereigns
of the riches at our disposal?
Originally published by the 4 AM Review, 2007