Needle Beach

“Out beyond the harbor, where the road runs along the beach,
I even lost the feeling of being on land.   The fog and the sea
seemed part of each other.   It was like walking on the bottom
of the sea.   As if I had drowned long ago.”
              ―Eugene O’Neill, from Long Day’s Journey Into Night

Before the miracles & the toxic aftermath
the synthetic profit & loss
drowning in equations no one ever bothered to
sleep it off & start over
but akin to the unrelenting appetite a near surgical
disregard infects the primal dissolution of the tides
whereof the memory runneth not to the contrary
“These are bottlecaps that were his eyes”
as the low-frequency neon in your wrist throbs to the beat
of an antediluvian twist dredged from the tidal swamp
that floods your heart
a heaving rack of surrender but deliberate as the parable
written in braille on the darkside of her thigh
& even if you can’t remember later
the meaning of its silence feeds the passion of your denial
with the usual consequence & valerian scripture
sustained by the vanity of shadows
that don’t register on the pavement
tipping the beach gate grillwork of sea mist & stone
to approximate the tone buried in whispers