Ocean's Edge
The water like a rumpled sheet
Curled limpless at my feet
And then unrumpled on the sand
Cast its lassitude and moan
Audibly pulling slips of water above a golden knee
The sands' clean belly dissatisfied
Make naked now the barren eye.
I keeping here again and again
I know not truly why
Except its me, perhaps, since a child
To find my mother's knee pain
Or when my daily hunger returns again
Something like that
Since the waters separated me
And left me on the dry land where I drown
Here comes the tide that brings the milk
Here comes the breast against rock jagging teeth
The water dissolving us with each caress
Into elements of stone,
Into blood bleached by the sun's indifferent tongue
The rocks dissolving take so long
The tides gnaw there erect mass with soft wet lips
And against their body firm, rub and groan
Dissatisfied again, a perennial complaint
Some one left the toilet seat up again
Some one used this tree and did not flush
Some one dragged their feet across the rug
The world has such rumpled lazy view from here
This vasty womb, is fumbling and old
With all the debris dumped upon its ovaries
The unknown chemicals of contraception
Makes me glad that I was already born
Makes sad if I must endure alone.
She has been rooming strangers all her life
Muddy footed rivers, sorrow brimmed with tears, rain
Sulfured and jaundiced from asthmatic skies
There is a RED LIGHT
In a district where nothing fresh remains
Expect the spate of hysterectomies
And some Jack the Ripper with a knife
What if she was your wife, answer me
You dumb husband man to such a precious wife
What if you had to drink this milk salt as hell
Because this island is all you got?
O she keeps through seasons swell of womb
Or face fist pounded by the breeze
Her covenant of fruitfulness and replenishment
Like marks upon a sheet
Rocks that drain themselves in her crumble
And dissolve like a mortal heap
Fallen to her ankle upon a naked floor
I cannot penetrate too deep
We have a barrier more than skin
The ambiguity that is threshing mesh
That crinkles too our flesh.
Life is only a rumpled sheet, sweetheart
I love you moaning and lapping
The presence of my dusty feet.
Copyright © David Smalling | Year Posted 2010
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