The Changeable Mantleslug

Let me start by saying that the other day I met
the Mediterranean Sea and it was a bit
like meeting a forgotten actor.

I walked along the boardwalk hearing
its waves that sounded like
the cough of an asthmatic Joe Pesci.

Although more than a forgotten actor
the sea reminded me of the mummies that
they exhibit in the Cairo Museum.

Nothing to do with you, Caribbean Sea,
this afternoon you have so much vigor that
it looks like you’re coming from the gym.

I do not know if I prefer you when
you lie down calm as
a lion in the middle of the meadow.

Or when you get angry and roar
and you try to sodomize the coast
in the manner of Marlon Brando

in The Last Tango in Paris.
The pelicans and the seagulls
they run off your fingers when

you try to catch them, it’s as if
you want to get out of your seabed,
but your chains hold you

so hard that all you can do is
shout and rant.
Tell the me truth, aren’t you bothered by

the cruise ships filled with the elderly
and all that crap we throw at you?
We have poisoned you, contaminated you.

Last year your coasts had
so much seaweed it seemed that
on our beaches a tourist

gave you syphilis.
I told myself this looks ugly.
And I wondered if this was not the end.

But instead of sending a tsunami
and taking your revenge on our cities
and erasing Miami from the map,

you went back to grazing your flock of waves
in peace and harmony
throughout the coast.

What else can I tell you? You are the sea
Of my childhood, I’ve spent my
life deciphering your words.

We both have aged, but
despite the passage of time
I keep coming to this reef

to talk to you with the
same innocence as when
I was a kid and walking around

your beaches I picked up a conch
and I put it against my ear and you
you spoke to me for the first time.

Here, underwater, bubbles are bells.
Whales are cathedrals
who spin in coruscating kelp
while we mimic the ribs of divers,
this one paper lantern
barreling toward
the bottom of the sea.

A flash then another there are tusks in the river
a clarinet on the far bank you are rose and grey
in a white chair my national flag the river
does not stop the shadows slough off and lie
in the underbrush lovers it says that’s everyone
isn’t it those having or wanting a river’s worth
without being shattered downstream by rapids

unfortunately this means you will need to endure
long stretches without love

& these you will need to endure with patience and grace
in order to be prepared for love when it comes

and love when it disappears
with the strength you’ve gained

because you’ve read poems
and novels and stories

and you’ve watched movies
and looked at pictures

and you’ve lived with animals
and you’ve loved them

and by virtue of all these things
you’ve practiced feeling something

as complicating as love without end
and as complicating as love no more

you will have kept up in practice
you will be able to take what love throws your way

because stories and poems have wrung
your heart and shattered your brain

over and over again to watch you change
so now you are ready

Pull the flaps down
behind you.

It’s hard to go
into a low song, into the darkness

slow chords struck
soundlessly. In your bare feet

come across the yard, cut across
the fields, and the highway, edges

of an irrigation ditch, edges of a torn cheek.
Every part of you rattles

and clashes. Spirits
that might have saved you

stand and watch.

These are the clippings of your words. They will not fly in that poetic way.
It will be a chicken—not even the swimming grace of a penguin.
It will have its head wrung and be eaten for dinner.
Sometimes, you will not know your chicken from another’s chicken,
their silence and yours will make your insides go deaf. You will be aggressive in your silence
as the noise surrounding. And this noise will request you come into its din. It will want you
to make sound to show that you can do what sound does, it will want you to show how you
take up space, reside in another’s body, against their drums, how you move them and some
will tear and be on the verge of spilling. And you will be a singular carving to be held close to the ear—crawl inside of you.

Gold moon rocks. Owls. An opportunity for flight
fools my son, who bolts outside. My body’s orbit
slows, so I follow. On my porch, clowns

bob for corn cobs. In midtown, boys
from northern Nebraska shoot pool.
Officers stroll by. Try not to look

lost. I long for an open door.
My mood blooms 100-proof.
So doors lock. A box of wrongs

overflows. Months of snow & sorry,
hymns & knockdowns. Tomorrow obeys
no common chord. A clown once told me a story
of swords and moons, of sons, their songs worn hollow.

It read: Only drink warm water from the glass that’s been sitting in the sun for two hours, cooled for three, and frozen for thirty minutes. When it thaws, take a sip, wait an hour, then chug the rest.

Windows bend into
planetariums
like translucent jars
reflecting absurdist
documents
from actual archives

                snow

snow

                                snow

My rooms are the wombs you return to
in your middle age spread

and the train I saw in the night was a city that moved
glittering along the soul’s horizon

like a two-toned baby rattle or rattlesnake
like coca-cola

like where you were born
like where you come from

like from where you get your looks
like from who you are

like chills
like chills curving over your skull

like as if
your skull is a horizon

like light on a wall you’re trapped behind
like gravy

like the last sliver of light seen through
bars on a door

like the smell of a just sharpened pencil
like when you first set foot through the door

like where you hope to go next
like a thought branching into other thoughts

like a thought one can’t stop
like a thought you want nothing to do with

like that thought finally put to rest
like putting a thought in its place

like taking a thought away from other thoughts
like not letting one kind of thought

overwhelm all others
like being swamped

like water
like water in the rain

like rain on your face
like tears and rain mixed up on your face

like your face all wet seeing it in a mirror
like why this is happening

like what can be done about it
like who’s there to see it