I surface now,
piss-water slipping off my slick skin
shiny like stars.
You shoot away
as fast as your slobbering little engines
can swim you.
Across the waves,
scintillant and gleaming black
I spit at you.
You are horrified--
This is my sea, yellow and stinking
and I am all your ancient fear.
Diving, I return
the toilet world's ocean bottomless
anal and sludged.
Cast off, you.
Grab your shit-filled catch;
I am below, and you know
that deep and underneath
there is only darkness
and true terror.
The above was first published in a slightly different form in _Bitterzone Terminal_ #1, Washington, D.C.
I am the haggard man;
my Bible is inscribed
"To Cain,
Upon His Consecration."
The surface of my skin
is like the bottom of the sea--
waterburnt and vapid
I seek nothing.
There is a song that goes,
Oh, what was it now?
I knew it once, my brother
taught me the words.
But I have forgotten them.
I have forgotten them.
I have forgotten them.
I have forgotten them.
On the morning of my birth
an Archangel came within my sight
she spoke to me
and the sand opened up beneath my mother.
The forests grew gray as I dawdled
The trees were laden with shadow
The exactitude of the brook
betrayed by late summer.
Now the winds of winter
ruffle me, and
I am childless: Guilty
in the quick darkness of the evening.