Sea Isle City, NJ

Sea rise • White spray • Sea holds • Then fades • Sea gathers • Sea rise

Months since anything happened, then all at once it comes.

A solution is obsolete for what ails me

Black flies • Bright spray • Cold sea • Now fades • Sea waters • Sea rise

Reduced to the tourism of my own life as exotic hollow,

old friends discovered me, old friends at odds when they agree

Free rise • No pay • Sea holds • Dark shades • Sea gathers • Sea rise

We make a weekend of its white and blue

idealists in from the wilderness, heading back out

Night flies • Like spray • Sea folds • We wade • Sea gathers • Sea rise

A furious blackness is made of the distance

The plane is the moon that is missing tonight

Friends rise • Why stay • Hold fast • Sea drains • Then gathers • Sea rise

Come along they say, don't stay, what the fuck's wrong with you motherfucker?

Some conversations are like operas I just feel to understand

Sea lies • I say • Sea waves • Sea stays • Sea troubles • Sea rise

Saw a star in the sky sitting above me

crown my head, and wondered What for?

Sea rise • White spume • Sea shoals • Gray shades • Sea splatters • Sea rise

That star kept me drilled into place

frozen to see what the sea is

Surprise • No wave • Sea catches • Regains • Sea flattens • Sea rise

Again and again it carries itself to the sand

Again and again it varies the way it carries itself and recedes

Sea breeze • White spray • Sea holds • Then wanes • Sea falters • Sea rise

And it keeps rising. Like I'm iron at heart, the magnet it's after

Castaway foam blows like beautiful fat. All myths become self-evident

Sea rise • White spray • Friends go • I went • Sea gathers • Sea rise

It could end what it says but it keeps on repeating

keeps rising, keeps trying, because so little is right, even the sea.

Wave rise • White spray • Sea holds • Then fades • Sea patterns • Sea rise

And I don't want to listen because I've heard it before

but never like this and never like this and never like this

Sea rise • White spray • Sea holds • Then fades • Sea gathers • Sea rise

Long after I sleep and madness tonight drains away

it's still going, still rising, because nothing is perfect.
Just look and see

Sea rise • White spray • Sea holds • Then fades • Sea gathers • Sea rise

Light on Aña Nuevo

Bright light • Dead tree • Dead seal • New Years

My thoughts are finished by the things I see.

A situation is just, a body is so, an error is like

Bright light • Dead tree • Dead seal • New Years

If I could *

all the beauty all the catastrophe all at once

I wouldn't think twice. I would do it. I would

Bright light • Dead tree • Dead seal • New Years

Listen, the sound of plistening buds captures the mountain;

slowed down to ensure

the infinity's timeless

as gold is my standard

tomorrows amounted in piles of

Bright light • Dead tree • Dead seal • New Years

Every day's more urgent less important than the last,

flirting with Dame Forfeit

as the petals of peonies

curl on the sidewalks of Silicon Valley.

Bright light • Dead tree • Dead seal • New Years

By anything which divides me I

identify the essential joint.

The desert is cold

as fame is obscurity, as the end is a rattlesnake

appearing like grass, in concrete, from where?

Bright light

Likenesses gather speed; everywhere harmony

horrible and heavenly rushes to this.

The Thing penetrates you and your enemies.

The difference between approaches near zero

till we're all sorry figures

chewing the bit of fantastic horizons.

Dead tree

With this acceptance comes the equivalent of peace,

a fog accumulated without question

like the underflesh of aging arms

freer than water, colorless, fixed.

Dead seal

I feel a trillion parts of me

both up and down to levels where

I am no concern--

apsara, mitochondria,

quintillionths and inside.

New Years

The conversations are an elevated silence

like the sea is hissing its real name,

or the sky brings moderation

by means of extremes:

tornadoes made of rainbows.

Bright light • Dead tree • Dead seal • New Years

I never dug on freedom, love--

just saw myself awaiting the bosons and quarks

emergent novelties, white holes

insane inside.

Cuz whenever I think things disintegrate and renew

someone dies and is no more.

You can tap the brakes but you can't stop the car.

So why not drive right into the golden wall?

A glass half broken is broke

and needs to be smashed for real.

The unnatural one is me. At night I think

alone in a world of wounds

preservation is absurd.

Or that could chaos be tracked

were I big enough to see

the globe of meaning from above

curve upon itself

and whole the emptiness

of what appears to be two rivals--

to where opposing arcs will join

our cold civil wars

withholding divinity.

Bright light • Dead tree • Dead seal • New Years

But some things we're not meant to know

like sunlight to a deep-sea worm

So every night another day

ripens to the rind.

So I drink to the withering vine.

So I drink to the

Bright light • Dead tree • Dead seal • New Years