I go outside to escape my self
and the end and the inevitable
and I sit admiring the night sky
until the stars become the scattered
words I’m trying hard to understand
but seem completely unable to.

I look up into that dark blue night
and I wish it was the ocean.
I wish the world was a fading purple
sunset. I wish the world was
the moonstone blue of the sea.

I’m drowning in the night sky instead,
in all this vast intangible vagueness.
There’s no edge, no shore to the sky,
just stars and then stars and then stars.

I want to be on the shore again,
feeling alive, feeling maybe, just maybe
there’s a little hope in the waves that
have always been able to comfort me.

See, the sea is full of lonely moments,
losing moments, shipwrecked moments,
but it is also the place of liminal on the shore
moments, meeting moments, happy, maybe moments.

But here I am, sitting beneath the sky, not the sea.

I came out here to escape yet all I’ve found
is the inevitable in all its dark, vast, uncontainable glory.
I look away because I don’t want to see it.
I look away, because now it’s the end,
I’m not ready to leave.

I gather handfuls of cold to my chest
and take it all back inside with me.
I dream of the ocean. I long for the sea.

I am so tired of hearing I'm too deep.

How about instead of saying

How much you love the ocean

You just start saying

You like swimming with the waves on the shore?

I only have time for people who like to scuba dive,

Not those who snorkel

On the surface.

I hadn’t meant to spy
just an evening’s walk along the beach
knowing that things are sometimes strewn there after storms
between a gust of wind—a break in clouds

Coming upon moonlight
gleaming on wet teenage backs
Two—
by a leaning erosion fence
fondling the last discoveries of childhood
fumbling with the barriers of her bikini
behind the erosion fence
out of sight and forbidding

Breeding like sea grass by rhizomes
prowling that neck, those *******
Gasping! Warring!
for the land of white warmth below their tans
His hands grip, lift, position, insist
By such undertow
mouths and hips pinioned in disbelief...

where they cannot be seen
two half-rounds in rhythm – struggle in the surge of being

as the surf binds them in refrains
about the ankles

Another love poem? I ask myself.

She's a red streak
where the waves froth her feet white
a girl scouring the sands for shells
in the ageless haze the sea spews
bending and rising like the doubt
if time by some quirk has stopped
and the slanting beach is that warped space
where for long has homed
all the free souls of the world
love being their only name.

I walk up to her richer
by another love poem.

We are all drops in the ocean,
We create ripples in the water,
Waves to the shore,
And tsunamis to the town.
We don't hold anything close to us,
But the people that we love.
And as it seems where we stand now
We only affect ourselves,
But if we look a bit closer,
We're setting fire to the rain.
Our tiny moves and actions
Aren't affecting only our souls alone,
But the God in heaven as well.
And that just simply isn't all.
For we are also slightly affecting
The ones that are close to us,
The ones we claim to love.
And so if we want to see
The affect we have today,
Look at each individual
That you have interacted with,
And don't just simply look at
Your selfish simple heart.