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.