1
To concede
in a night that the world
is enormous
swells more my ignorance.
friend Bino

You answer
it is that I shut one eye
and dwell more
on the dark drop of the sea
disquiets me

I tremble
when you confront my
mind's tempest
with silence to wrest
an absent

wisdom. I have yet
to emerge nobler,
heaving
in my ignorance

2
My skull chills the sea in
the mirror. As I dive,
weeds splatter all over.
Upon which floor am I
now planted? Birth tells me
I have not plunged at all.

There is this fast void that
inhabits colder
than darkness. I am the
uninvited guest the
roaches and the stars
are forbidden from

divulging their songs to.
I am the ghost broken
from not reaching the sage
in plight. I shed my dreams
that flight may cast me out
of perverse vigils.

A whale fills the shell where
I perch, as a ravished
sea slays more birds than it
can redeem. A murky sky
shuns its prodigal stars.
I outsit all but

3
To prod a cockroach
who picks clean fish
bones and the world
(an unfinished meal,
whale) fetal

To learn at last there is
vengeance in knowing
oneself, emersed in
dust-parodied sea

To test intact dreams
for scars or songs

To prove to this dreamer
there is survival;
now that memory
promises to die,
life can be livable

To learn to crawl and fall
and outsit over spilled
time, to prod a cockroach
who picks clean fish

4
Day after day
alone on a shell,
a whale within weeps
yearns to break, fly

The scar that herds
the stars bleeds to swell
the fool's heavy eyes,
two seas that heave

The night bears clouds,
the whale wears weeds;
as the rain idles
he sleeps, struggles