--THERE’S ALWAYS MORE TO SAY, AND I’M SORRY I’M SO WEAK

                                     Diluted

The water is disturbed again, hurtling knives at me. 

Every wall has gouged-out eyes that leak streaks of water and runny drywall crud. 

Yesterday the water was quicksand trying to mug me from the waist down. 

A day before that, an eddy felt me up and slapped my ass.

When I exhale, an ocean booms against my molars, sinking ships, battering the lighthouse by my tonsil bell. 

Seals romp in the bedroom that’s become a shallow lagoon. 

Even when it’s bone dry. the tea kettle won’t stop whistling,

Water, water everywhere, even when it’s not. 

The babies know, doused as they are.  They’re so tiny, still so brand new, yet their split-pea eyes flit suspiciously. 

When you come home from work, a tsunami floods through the door with you. 

You smell like the undertow. 

Your kiss tastes brackish, like a tide pool shuffling dead crabs through the shoals. 

Your words float out as air bubbles, making it impossible to hear.

But that doesn’t matter.  I’m fixated on the new man floating in your glass bowl eyes, a merman just waiting to be flayed.

      

                              

--HE CAN SEE NO REASON, CAUSE THERE ARE NO REASONS.  WHAT REASONS DO YOU NEED TO BE SURE?

                                              Here

Lying akimbo, legs splayed like two dolphins afloat, you part for me, or for some other sailor. 

There’s always work to be done, oil to be changed, mail stamped Returned To Sender. 

There’s Murphy’s law, the law of gravity, the law of averages.

Entering you is like French kissing a ghost.  Nothing shakes, but everything stirs.  A vase is toppled.  A chair gets knocked up.  The vacancy sign is obscure, or out of order.

You’re electrically sedated with a cherry on top.  And still you snarl and nip and clip like a jungle cat tangled in the net.

I know what your mother said, what your father stole.  But open your eyes, please.  Look at me.  I’m right here.