Soldier's Wife

Who are you, calling to me from across these deafening waves.
I stand on the shores with fist-fulls of sand
at my sides
watching you wade out into the empty sea.

Your blue dress floats around your hips
like a jelly-fish.
Your head down, your hair in your eyes,
the terrible sun sinking into the horizon.

What am I,
if I am not the man
who has an unhealthy obsession
with the kind of creature you are.

I swear to the horrible, blood-thirsty gods
I meant every word I didn’t say.
You will never know what
madness goes in within my head.
It’s thick, and palpable,
overwhelming and hot to the touch.

If you never come back to land,
if you remain amongst the foaming waves,
I will burn every single scrap of paper
that identifies I ever walked
this cursed earth.

“What am I?” asked the voice.
“If I am not something distant?”

A Brief History of Current Events

We must never forget that we came from the sea.
Boy & girl stroll hand-n-hand down the pier,
a thief comes in the middle of the night and robs the rectory.
Matilda paints portraits for pennies, dreams of pirate ships,
her mother’s brain is being slowly stolen.
She claims that the phone keeps ringing, when she picks it up there’s no one there.
I am becoming increasingly paranoid.
A man in a long coat and dark hat followed me for twenty blocks yesterday.
I lost him in the cemetery where they buried
the poet who hung herself when her lover left her for a word processor.
Matilda calls me late at night, sobbing,
she has run out of watercolors.
I suggest she try oils or pastels,
she slams the phone down in disgust.
The children in the schoolyard on Coral Ave.
all swear they saw something moving in the woods across the street.
Their screams could be heard twenty blocks away.
Matilda and I go to the beach, lift shells to our ears, wait for an answer.
A bonfire burns behind us, someone strums a guitar badly,
we’re all out of Whisky and beer and money.
We must never forget that we came from the sea.