Map of Water
It began as a blank landscape.
You crying.
This no longer holding
in the palm of your hand.
Your record is a constant fire.
Your record is a line
the ocean draws
in its longing to shore.
I communicate longing
like the ocean. I cannot
communicate longing.
You are somewhere else.
Your skull turned.
You are all shoulders.
My night bones flailing.
My heart in grief motion.
Say skull like waving.
The black of my hands,
my defense, my family.
My family is a body
of water the ocean draws
in its longing to shore.
Hands oceans.
My birthstone,
my own death strings,
my body.
What pit, what spine,
what earth's burning?
Our dead strewn
in their copper paintings.
Black the hands
of the old masters.
Earth's capability to hold water.
Earth's no longer holding
water. The ocean no longer
holding ground.
Somnambula Atlas
I remember watching an octopus
watching the myth unfold
through the ancient waters
and how he could always feel
the blankness through
each pucker of the earth
and all at once.
An axe drawn too close to your teeth.
A splinter in your belly button.
This is the blue black void of gravity
undulating around you. This is a sign
to fail in some undertaking.
This is me with your antique
fitting the map to the place
where we gave in as many shadows
what this time, this day wants.
Each amber ichor of light, each
dissimulated cartwheel shadow.
At no point you think
to open your eyes to see
a dream occurrence.
No sky but this scene
in actual bees.
You need not a stereoscope
to know a landscape that isn't
even a landscape.
You need not breathe or walk
or see deeper into this.
You need not crutch
or tumble or meanwhile.
This is the moment you realize
you aren't going home.
You are dreaming of an octopus.
This is one of eighty of eighty one places on the map.
Where do sea creatures bury their dead?
