Tonight You’re the Sea

Your jelly legs are the sea-
sickest of all sailors, tumbling and pitching
on my rolling shoulders. The gulls squawk –
or is that you? – and I smell the ocean:
salt and rum and dead things. You moan,
my bipedal mermaid, and I know

you’re glad it was I and no other who carried you,
limp and lifeless, out of the Tempest
Bar and Grill. And though I’m spearing you,
I saved you from the small fry and the pool sharks,
who would have nibbled your fingertips and fins,
sucked the kisses from your cold lips
and the sweet marrow from your thighs
and hips. I think about how many sailors
may have hauled you up before, but I know none
could hold you and rock you like me.

Though you are on land, you still have
a bit of the sea in you: your blue eyes swim,
your hair waves like Sargasso to my rhythm,
and in you I can feel the tides swell, then
retreat. You turn away, toward the ocean.
You close your eyes, curl into yourself – why
do you batten down the hatches? The Tempest
was hours ago, and you’re safe here, now, with me
as you never could be out there, surfacing in pools
of streetlamps’ shallow light Is it not safer
for you, my lost, sea-drunk creature,
to be here aboard my strong ship, to lie here in my
warm bed, my steady arms, with no tumultuous surges
but mine?

[Perhaps you will remember this haiku {it's okay if you don't}. This is an expansion, I suppose, of that haiku. Also, I told my Creative Writing class that I would write one with sexy times in. If you call rape sexy times.]

The Glow

The Glow creeps upon the floor
its spiny dexterous fingers grasp
squeeze savagely the wisps of dark
and rend them from curtains
and couch and carpet
until he wants to scream

when slowly it crawls
up his pant leg, pulling
dim strands from the threads
as it slinks onto his hands his face
The Glow spits in his eyes
and to his fearful squints whispers
“Let go of shadows.”




A re-imagining of this haiku.

This is what you get when you ask me about posting, I guess.

My Nature Writing professor, Murphy, had us write 4 paragraphs in class on Friday (a place, a place within that place, a person you associate with that place, and a living creature you associate with that place), and here's the revised version. One of you even co-stars with a hermit crab in it!



When you pull over to go to Third Beach, you may question why you’re stopping there. There is no beach in sight, only trees. But you get out anyway and start walking; surely it’s just over this next hill. It isn’t. By the second hill, though, you can’t hear the highway. You may have even forgotten that it’s there. You look around and find that the trees have been doing nimble backbends over your head, trying to whisper in your ear the whole time. They’re sneaky, those trees. As you look up at them, you breathe in their message, and you find that it’s a faintly piney one. You learn to do your tromping carefully because you wouldn’t want to misstep and somehow fall from this place. You walk on, and the trees’ whispers take on the churning rhythm of gossip. Their breath is salty now. You remember why when the sea appears from around a corner. Perhaps you’re tempted to throw the trees a wink as you clamber over the driftwood and onto the beach. Do it.

You may sit for a little while once you reach the sand. Start a fire. Talk to your friends. Dare the cold, white surf to catch you. Let it. Then go exploring. If you travel up the beach, you’ll find a small chapel hewn from the rock. You can’t miss it. It’s always filled with the most faithful locals – hundreds of steadfast limpets, snails, barnacles, and chitons who adhere resolutely to the holy rock, though the waves of the world may batter them and try to convince them to falter. As you stoop further into that dark and eternally damp sanctuary, you, too, will want to join the fold. Casting your eyes up to the heavens, you’ll see the tiny apostles stacked high into the darkness, stretching to the point that you cannot tell where the creatures end and the crevice begins. You’ll know then that you envy what the stone around you has; you want to touch every clinging creature so intimately as these walls do. Press your hands to the rock – let them become as clammy as the rock. Fit yourself into the tightest space in the darkest corner. Maybe you’ll want to talk to the small snail by your thumb. Chat away.

When you emerge from your cave, you’ll find your friend Christine sitting on the beach. Watch her a little while. See the way her dark curls drift on the wind? The way she closes her eyes? She more than merely knows Third Beach. She feels it. Go ahead and approach her; she doesn’t mind. She only abstractedly realizes that you are there, and when you sit down beside her she’ll look a little surprised, like a librarian discovering one last patron in the stacks after closing time. At once she is both beside you and light-years from you. You know her to be a serene, spiritual woman, yet somehow you know that this time it’s different. She’s a poet, but she won’t need any words to describe her thoughts about the beach. Just look in her brown eyes. It’s all there: the hazy gray sky, the colorless sand. The waves. The sand. The sea. Third Beach.

Because you are not Christine, you get distracted. Tide pools! Tiny animals! Plunge your fingers in. Ignore the cold. Find a discarded snail shell for your collection. Don’t put it in your pocket, though. See the claws, the spider-like legs? It’s a hermit crab. You set the shell on your palm and hold your breath. Your legs get tired and your eyes strain as you wait for the crab to surface. He doesn’t, the little brat. You’ll show him. Put him back in the tidal pool and watch, sitting on your heels. Touch the green, sticky anemones next to him just to watch them pull all their tendrils in. You did it, didn’t you? Bully. The hermit crab’s still not come out. You turn and look back at Christine for a moment. You turn back and look at the hermit crab’s shell. It’s gone!


Maybe you haven’t quite figured out Third Beach, you think. You haven’t.

Today is the day, I think, to be dating a model.

I think that I shall choose a pretty one (cause let's face it, folks, they're not all pretty). This one will do. Oooh-la-la, those eyes!



I guess I'll have to get over him being with other girls on photo shoots, though. Here's him (Ian) getting cozy with another model (Randi) on set:



But, oh, those eyes.



Thank you, Ian for being so patient with me! I love you!

Formal Logic.

Dr. Ashcroft's glasses, I think, are what bugs me. They make his eyes look too big for his face; like a dog with its raised hackles, he seems to try to look larger, more intimidating, the academic equivalent of nature's bluff "Don't mess with me, I'm smarter than you think."

This room is too hot. Somebody in the back needs to open a frickin' window. I've forgotten to pay attention again, hardly noticing his nasally voice as it mixes with the dust motes in the air. I now listen. The sound, though unequivocally devoid of any depth or richness, evokes a dark philosopher's study, the kind where the oriental rugs and the dark and the leather-bound tomes and the heat - the goddam heat! - block out everything in the outside world until you've forgotten that there was ever such things as tandem bicycles or fall leaves or kids with strawberry ice cream cones that melt all over their tiny fingers. Ashcroft ignores the flickering, tired glittering of the dust as the motes turn in place, suspended in the sunlight. He continues to give the lesson, drawing on the board. I don't realize until the male students chuckle that the symbols Ashcroft has jotted are rather phallic. Knowing Ashcroft would never see it that way, I smile. He never sees anything in any way but his own, not even if it's well reasoned. He hates when I raise my hand; I'm a girl and I should sit in the back and be quiet, but he doesn't know that I don't intend to give him the peace he thinks he has earned with his tenure.

For right now, though, I content myself with reading the graffitied backs of the chairs around me: "Mike sucks dick," "Fuck you," "'86." I've never liked graffiti, but at least it says something, at least it's free. The little man finishes his lecture, then turns around, blinking at us as if emerging from a cave. Maybe Mike does suck, but where am I? I'm stuck here, in the depths of Ashcroft's unimaginative, dank academia. Ashcroft calls on someone, then rejects their answer. The answer isn't presented just like he learned it seventy years ago; it is wrong. "Not today," I think to myself, taking a stand against someone, but nobody really takes note of a revolutionary whose soapbox is inside her own mind. Taking out my green pen and stealing a glance - the ferocious glance of a true rebel - at Ashcroft, who is looking like a particularly squishable bug, I issue my manifesto on the back of the empty desk in front of me. Maybe someone later will find the green outline of a heart and not care if love and freedom and tandem bicycles are well-argued, sound and logical.

Maybe.

Nephrology and The Old Testament Are More Linked Than You Might Think.

I've been to the restroom about thirteen times in the past three and a half hours. Why? I'm writing a paper, that's why. (The Murphy in me would like to add "and I'm on a deadline" to the sentence above.)

When I sit down to write a paper, I mostly drink water and cogitate. Even when not much cogitating happens, I still drink. Drink, think, drink, think, drink some more. I believe the water has begun to start shooting straight through me, as it no longer has any color. My kidneys love when I have essays, and my bladder loudly disagrees. But my discourse on the book of Job calls, and I must go. Glug, glug.