ANCESTRAL SIRENS OF THE GENTLY FORGIVEN

I hope you're both at the beach
where the horse shoe crab splits open
a can of black eyed peas, makes
the moon, black and half risen, cook at noon.
I see only Holland from my bed time's horizon.
The cage of age yawns
a tremor-specific hysteria, not unlike my grandfather's
Parkinson's
when tying the midget pikie to his fishing line. I shake
his dead tremors from his coffin genetically.
I knew everything once,
and this gently becomes a day for shutting down.
It moves across the multicultural landscape
the way we investigate the crashes' crevices
with a uniform
to demarcate redemption and holistic contact:
We're always behind the ocean's metal and glass,
hidden from touch by a lying down sadness,
even its surfaces.
In many ways, I rely on the conventional devices of clowns.
Pick scabs off my sores, label them
with a swimsuit and oar. She, as in me,
lacks the symmetrical face though,
so I poke out my lips and curl them against my long nose,
sing the sweetheart song that does not end, and when I move,
I am all angles.
My stick figure speaks the life of a bobbysoxer,
the pitch vibrates the wooden reeds of distant clarinets.
I pull up to my knees, as if the whole weight
of an Oedipus sits straddling my shoulders.
I hear my splashes echo past the graveyard.
I miss my DNA. I swim the picture to you.

I HEAR LIKE NAMES FALLING

I don't want to hide my wine
when I hear like names falling
from the beveled thoughts of citizens,
submerged in this head's gaping crown.

You invite yawns in with your crumbs and your gin
to discover the meaning of mercy-but.

Today is a Modigliani breeze.
Ana tells me I can own my own neck;
it is to be petted and touched by the shadows of legs
beneath the sheets, however silken
the petals I draw from her skin. So.

If I make people feel good, will they
do good? What's my motivation?
How long does good last?
What stage do we pace in the process?
Next time I'll ask forgiveness, instead of permission.

I'll love the music before the mistress
who grounds words from sex and clarinet wind.
We'll swim the bowl of blackberries where
our fingertips mistake each other
for liquid and begin to drink the juice
of everlasting youth,
imported all the way from Guantanamo.
Now go, revel in the lips of your country.

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Tag: Amy King