Reading the Water

Just rolled in from the beach at Sleazeville
where the seaweed had eyes that were
green like rust & blinking in the sunlight
It was rough trip back but with my left hand
tied to the steering wheel & my right
sliding up her thigh the road folded in on itself
like bad dream

I was thinking of reinventing
the Mariana Trench while strumming the
latitude & longitude of a crooked smile
              as though it might cure the common
yearning love leaves in its wake
                              as we’re still learning the shape the sky
              takes inside jagged cumulus smoke-rings
of haze & broken shadow wings that
rake the sand

Against the rippling glass of her monsoon palace
I wish a language that can’t be spoken
& a city of concrete sliding into the sea