I am Moby Dicked.
Lying down dreaming
to the beat of the ocean and
curtains of light that shine like
blue movie magnetic tape
dangled from an opening fist
miles above where wave tops
lick the keels of wooden things.
Everything is alright,
you just have your eyes closed.
Through gills I see
less clearly.
My heart still beats in its cage
that is an amphitheater too.
I swim through heaps of dead roses
when I go
to see it play on Saturday ever nights.
The dresses. You should see
the cuts,
pleats, hems, and strings
work loose as it spins and belts
to the bones and boxes overhead.
Lying down dreaming and Moby sicked.
When my heart does not play and
instead drifts away like petals
to a vase, draped in dust, to a table,
to a home years vacant
after the wind through windows
left broken
I give myself
to the chase, but pace myself metronomic,
rising sandy and dusk eyed,
my thousand grained bed erased
as my tails leave glimmering tracers of silt.
Hold yourself to what your heart desires.
They do not tell you the shortcut
through the wavering woodland of
high water grass is to know what it wants and
then meet it there, but even so,
I am Moby gripped.
I have bitten the score. I have tasted
the shore. I have gone back for more and
I have gone again to the Saturday theater
for lust,
but when I've needed it most,
the heart plays the ghost and
the silence between my ribs
becomes a pounds per square inch
retina bursting crush.
Chase your dreams,
chase your screams,
chase the krill fireflies in daylight and
spend their insides into your fingers
one dozen at a time.
The hooks, you see,
with fine metal plate and
hand stitched whatevers,
the slow rise to where it goes
to cuddle with the moon and play
sporting games with harpoons,
the little scars and the big scars,
the places where we meet,
the hooks that have settled
where scale laps to scale
are all part of
the catch and release of short lived Moby Dick dreams.
