I sit in my castle under a greasepaint sky
winter 2 feet deep in places
my kingdom in ashes
and I climb to the highest turret
looking out to the ocean
where I can see you in the distance
treading water
looking back at me and
I hate that you live in the sea and I on land
I learned from the best magicians
under the worst conditions—
I can bend unclean cutlery
and make babies hop up and down like frogs
The townsfolk are fearful
and they called for the mongrel hordes—
my overwrought iron fence won’t hold them
and I wonder if I were to sprout wings
becoming a dragon
could I rain fire on them
send them singeing like children
back to their little villages scurrying under
their high-pitched roofs that only dogs could hear?
As I see the approaching army
blotting out the horizon
I wonder about the growing distance between us
and I remember back to better times
II
Riding on my high seahorse
I skim the coral reefs
slashing the backs of bottom feeders
and manatees
the gulf between us narrowing
till I find your mermaid arms
under Ptolemy skies
And I try to get you to say your name backwards
and every time I close my eyes I blink you out of existence
We play Parcheesi with the people of Atlantis
and Scrabble in the Bermuda Triangle
and when I am with you I can hear my heart thunder
like the sound of distant dogmas and I am imprinted on you
for we are tethered by the vestiges of primitive morphology
connecting us to a broken past
And let us fly across the water
as we leave this diseased world as contagious as yawns
emerging from thalidomide darkness
keeping on the wavefront of this lathe of foam
for we are harbingers of change
III
As I daydream on a bus with dirty windows
(holding back the snow)
sitting in someone’s warmth
covered with Schrödinger’s cat hair
staring at an ad
of a couple on a Mediterranean cruise
listening to dogs barking behind a chain-linked fence
I realize I am both a particle and a wave
and a fly ball waiting to be resolved
and this must end
You circumnavigate my thoughts
and I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders
and we can keep going around
in ever-widening orbits
till one of us throws up
our hands or throws in
the towel
IV
I blamed the troubles of the world
on daylight saving time
and I shared a Reuben Sandwich
with a Rubenesque woman
and I helped you
fight off the BEM’s unwanted advances
I gravitated toward you—
that restaurant on the moon
where we first met
had no atmosphere
but you were there and breathed life into me
and told me that although time is relative
you can choose your friends
and I learned that most people take a lifetime to die
as each comet’s tail passes
we grow fewer in number
by David Clink
from: The Surly Blondes of Earth, ©2002
