Under Currents

The ocean churns, deep in the bowels of its great stomach A scurvy, a barnacle, a flag flung high amast From deep, deep down inside, below pressure boiling Bones exploding, windpipes constricting Where no human soul should inhabit Down, down, down, where illuminates All manner of unseen creatures With crooked jaws Electric lights of blaring neon green and soft sparkling Pinks And the color of glow sticks, that children wore ‘round their necks at skating rinks Where no child goes now, the pull and the noiselessness of the silty bottom, where hagfish twist themselves over carcasses like women scouring the streets for loose change I imagine my body down there Blue veins and stuff new Resting in the Mariana Trench Supine, arms floating upward towards light sans soleil A water dream, I am awake, fluttering eyelids! All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel the…. I don’t remember the rest Tears and sweat like the ocean My heart is like the ocean Yet I have columns of flame around me And I pull on my t-shirt over my pale body And drive myself to the ocean, letting cars pass Wondering why And when my bare feet hit the sand My hazel eyes (or were they half blue and half brown? Nobody could ever decide!) are drawn to the expanse of water Limitless possibilities, as the sun crowns the horizon I reach out my hand to grab something Across the eternal shocking blue And what I grab is another hand And it is my own