Magic Boat

I’m a magic boat on your choppy waves

navigating freely across swells no light

passes under

and yet I find myself tipping over a lot

and monkeys jump across my decks

dipping their tails in wet paint

the salt air really does a number on a girl’s surface

blistering and peeling and popping off colors

so is there ever a lull time when the buckets don’t come out

and the deckhands get their hands on a brush?

I’m just a little boat, so sweet, the way I dip

as though to say hello

my windows look like Betty Boop

my smokestack looks like Popeye

that’s how I know I’m someone

I have a name and a face

that resembles something else

somewhere in all the world

These blue waves, sky waves

swells are swell, birds circling all day and night

to see what we don’t want

mostly it’s cardboard with the tape peeled off

and other biodegradable garbage

I’m a we with all my persons inside me

all doing work that matters all the time

swinging hammocks that secretly wind up clocks

snoring vibratos that hum in the boards

deckhands scrubbing decks of

scales and guts

eyeballs and hearts

seaweed and hair

the cook waves his spatula in the air

making hotdogs and jello for the crew

Why, the portholes are all just as round as can be

with handles just like on those front loading washing machines

that lock them shut when waves bash the boat like

slams of the fist of god

or whacks of the tail of mother earth’s little sister

she always was a wild one

wouldn’t listen, did what she felt like no matter

hell or highwater, broke her father’s heart

anyway this will be just as nice as your daughter’s ocean

the one with sapphires and rubies all over it

and emeralds and pearls

and I’ll thank you to keep quiet

about how I fell out and down

and you caught me

serving me up on a garnished platter

because I’m just a boat, I can’t be blamed

for mistakes I make because I float

you pinched my legs where I couldn’t see

you scared me with your big breath

your night eyes loomed like storms in green clouds

your teeth flashed like lightning

your tongue was as big as the moon

I wish you could have seen me the night I came away

from port, those docks were just right

the way we threw lines, and mountains jabbed the cold air

like wrinkled dresses tossed about

I took a bath on that one

but it was nice, I was rocking

just rocking

like putting a baby to sleep

Well Being

No one is exempt from sorrow.

It’s part of the mad ride in the world

where it goes down through water and over rocks

clear up through sky.

Sometimes I can see the whole city, the curve of the earth,

so I lie under a pile of stones,

held to the ground.

It’s the underlayers that need exploring,

where the treasure is, the long canals,

the dim rooms, which I’ve built

with the half of myself I don’t remember.

Work

My ancestors have already done the heavy labor

while I linger in the half lit doorway

in the floating dust of the anteroom of the mine

sorting out the rocks with shining veins

thinking of all the hard work ahead

the fractured heaven in slag

my bloody wet foot

far from the works

it matters

to the grass as green as water

the sky as blue as a house

Wake Boat

Between the bottom and the boards

they made a coffin for the body

and floated it, a house

for the house, a cup

for the smaller cup. Wreathed

in radishes and onions,

the strangers ate, happy,

lit by darkness, like pools

where the rain makes eyes

Words and Water

for the last time the light faded

every wish was for more light

next to the window a crow said

forever nine brothers in feathers

it was the night when the earth knew

which were the ones who never left

We live to the least leaf

we pull the lever

we tow the line

I’m lively

jump to the left

jump to the right

I’m bright

as sunlit frost

I had my blue period

It was the river who told me to shed my old skin

I developed a sad way

though I deftly wove a new life

and learned to define pleasure

as freedom from inner oppression

tonight the frogs sing in the pond

the sun is gone

the light left

he made a mast from a straight tree

the math of it charmed me

I heard the news

I saw the light

the scene was softly lit from below

it was seen by passing birds

sever

it said

fresh from the kind forest

fine with me, I answered

fever bright, old song

a memory of bones

flat in the sky

the long flight to a new life

cresting at the ridge of the next day

increase my having, my flapping line of sheets

the creak and bang of the back door

where is the celestial crab, the season of

my crabby stomp and crash

this is my crisco moon, my larded lover

my fortune

shining forth to me in my longing

this is the sheen and

shiver of love

the shoal of children phosphering

in the shush of wave lip

the sess of retreat and return

ploo and plish of dropped line

kine and kin of household

preen of self in water mirror

bish of new old wave

pobe of redrawn shore

leb of light in fish scales and eyes

deeb of tuned radio to news of storms and skies

crum of short laugh of neighbor heard

luff of forks against plates

fright of no sky, no wave, no shore, no neighbor, no light

cream of having

morsel of moment eternally savored

who must know or not why this is necessary

the most essential animal

the animal makes mischief and the world laughs

shreiks

a lolo

a bumbum

a beebee

I leap

and leap and leap