Text - so surface, no real nuance,
Lacks the touch of real contact.
So sex (the quick pick up fuck)
Skates the icy front that masks the lake.
Me, the drowning boy, mad fool,
Dives in, straight down, to plumb the depths,
The dark, the wet, the fierce unknown,
The soul that moves beneath the ice.
Jimmy Stewart runs to bail us out:
He thinks liaisons dancing on thin ice
A danger just to those who fall,
And cannot comprehend the dive.
We head below, or belly flop:
Our craft demands the motherlode
Of sharing feeling on the bed,
Its depth, not height, the truest gauge.
Dreamy fade. An empty shore,
The shallow water rolling in.
You gaze, afraid, from hard dry stone
And, rooted, bear to let it come.
Your toe gets wet, the rest comes quicker,
Even if a cock'll pick a
Fate that you don't know
Or can't control:
You hit the ground
Loving, living, letting it
Really rip you
To the heart;
Your soles touch sand
Your lips get damp
You swallow
Something salty,
Your eyes grow moist
You blink it back
And still it floods
Around you,
Through you
From you
In you
Of you
You.
You're all water, body given up to feeling,
Not surface dead without a wave.
You fall, you rise, you break the surf,
Flow down with grace to glance the earth.
So this is higher knowledge
The power to be hurt and own it;
The
Far Side dolphins'
non parole
To lads' one-liner chatups.
To black. Beneath,
We swim with sharks.
No sight, but touch
And smell and taste.
I glimpse your skates, your winter muff,
Circling above, assured and safe,
And call in tongue that you don't know,
'Dive, dive, dive' or chance to fall.
I watch.
Wait.
What.
No?
We diving creatures, falling headlong,
Scarcely think to touch cool air,
But we might rise to prick the ice
And rescue drowning skaters.
