Open Water

Labor long
at the edge
of another wave,
of another birth,
where it is simple to list
the ways you have been lost

at sea before,
the ocean lovely,
the enormous confusion a leviathan
who wanders leeway
past the bow of this ship.

Set the sails free
and cast away into the watery blue.

Taste the salt on your lips
as you disappear into the nothingness
of open water.

Agonizing

In the intricacy of this morning,
just like any other morning,
I am fragile as a husk of the juvenile ghost
I once was.

I cling to the idleness of that haughty girl
as graceful as granite
jostled by the plumage of a body,
exhumed flaunting the deft hands

engorged with wanting,
consumed by thinking
I could keep myself
from the agonizing arrows

of another chance
to disappear into a cleft
of a day of organic despair
and measuring the blue of the sky.