Don't Give Up The Ship 2000-2002

I.

how fog releases vision
from its comfort, find
the can buoy, the film
letting picture a sail.
what capsize note plays
her siren, secretly cut
from depth’s history-
like our fingers by
scissors (maybe shears).
the quick equator
of chance breaks shore,
oh her telescope
approaches its destination-
the earth’s evening
shadow, a requiem
for fertile mermaid
books, their volumes. look
after the hull, it’s
beaten and thick with
barnacles.

II. bermuda triangle

about the wreckage, ships-
our dinosaurs, in compassed
failure. sunken eyes,
harmonics, the navigator
mouths his last. the
latitudes of skin, forming
each fracture, all shivers:
our gulps piling up.
the lighthouse bleeds our
signals out- we’re salty. and
just before we go down,
stern to bow, the meniscus of
language breaks,
and you swim out
to murder.

III. long-distance battleship

the torso of my question
makes mouse trampling
oblivious to ache-
you sleep the knots
out of me, you sleep
a recital of fictions,
search holes for
some continuous supplication,
or monument. you remember
the ocean into place.
alas; the fortune of shipwrecks,
sunken by treasure, breaks
a half-horizon and
my meridian leaks louder.
scampering on all sides
now, the mast bleeds
a harmony of clicks, the
thousand corpses bob-
returning the tide to its captain.

IV.

moon moves caps white,
you knuckle down the
rations- correction.
my heliograph is a tear,
the altar of drowning,
built of weeks, rises.
we’ll tear out
the center, we’ll chart
abandon and course
over and over the line.
all available air
escapes the lifevest,
the minute we rest
completes thin ceilings
and new bodies.

V. signal

my compass is sound
activated, off key.
more believable magnet
is your voice, stopped.VI. a mannerist cup
it’s heavier than the land
which floats toward.
salt, the reprise, about
cat-clawed seconds, still.
we’ll choose not to swim,
pull the plank in,
the north star hides from
its opposite, the north.
we’ll hit the shore presciently.

VII.22 theses

these storms, sweeping
headed for the end of
manageable and fragile.
our cargo sleeps
the galley, clean from
brine maneuver, lands.
inch scale vast, says
the map resisting its
flat posture. we’ll
sneak out to crashing
stars and falling waves.