Free Verse
My Mermaid's
Back in Town
Tumbled gems fell from the
sky in faceted
shafts of ruby light caught briefly in the mirrors
of my eyes as they scanned the horizon one more time
searching in vain for the rippling scales and
flicking tail of a woman raised by seahorses
galloping under waves of silver and turquoise.
The lonely lighthouse crumbled behind me with
the silent thunder of neutrons colliding long after midnight
when the gods and demons have all gone to bed
toddling off with nightcaps clutched in feathered fingers
clawed hands and all the wings and pitchforks
this side of the rio grande.
I can see her in my mind's eye
tossing her yellow mane and laughing that laugh
the laugh that reminds me of hot nights spent
falling onto her mouth where my lips would
get lost in a jungle far from civilization and all
the ordinary things disappeared in quick flashes of
delight shot through with sparks and streaks of
supernatural serendipity.
Ghosts nudge my elbow
these days when I begin to daydream of her
and then these nights that pass in velvet pain
and the blackness wrenched out of pillows
of desire that explode in showers of dew fallen
from heaven in slow drifting sheets of soft pink steel.
What does it all mean when she arrives on horseback
at a full gallop while not a hair is out of place on
her pretty head and the stars are aligned one on top
of the other and fighting amongst themselves to
be the first to kiss her face as soon as the sun goes down
and the song of the crickets comes up.
Eclipsed and full of the seething star shine
seeping out of tiny cracks in the emotions I held
so close that none but the black cats could sense
as their armies patrolled the backyards of sleepy
masters too lazy to notice the storm approaching
from the east where all evil eventually dwells
in the broken kingdom of destiny.
Back on dry land at last she smiles
as her dainty feet caress the earth
her breath undulates in warm waves
her body unfolds and her skin shines
and all around her fall back in reverence to
the goddess made flesh in front of them
and man what a story to tell mildred tonight
when I finally get to pittsburg they all think.
She steps around the ordinary and glides away
in that sure sense of style that makes the
birds sing the sky cry the ground shake
the fault lines crack the men follow in the
radar of love that tracks that satellite in
the upper atmosphere you know the one
it has those blinking lights of red and pink.
Oh my god they lost my bag she thinks
and remembers the trinkets collected undersea
in ancient grottoes of tritons swaying in
the currents of tides long since gone when
lemuria sank in great cataclysms of silken fury
taking with them a whole way of life only
the islanders can now dimly recall.
A crystal hums between her breasts
and a panther crouches at her feet
a guardian of some nameless grassy atoll with
palm fronds waving in the sun intersected
by the clear blue shadows of the watery
deep beyond deep.
I can only channel the ecstasy to her
from my own infinite caresses of
loves gothic spires bending in the winds
of my life rushing through canyons and
up mountain peaks and then back down again
in an endless rotation that is suddenly
aligned again in both my dreams and in
the simple way she blends my days with
my nights.
Taxi taxi take me home
neon streetlight polished chrome
quiet neighborhood here I come
back to where I started from.
Now she is back I can come out
of my hibernation and suspended
animation frozen in time in blocks
of ice cooled by the white coils
of separateness but now the heat
is yellow and orange and soon it
will be red melted liquid flowing
down volcanic slopes steam vented
washing away the empty feelings
brought on by the search for union
and now at last the hunt can be called off
once and for all.
Dripping wet right from the sea
scented by strange orchids flaming violet
still coated in the moist island rainfall
carried aloft on those balmy trade winds
she arrived just in time to save me from
drowning in the stagnant pools left by the
receding waters of reality.
She is the bell ringing way out on the buoy
warning of rocks below when the fog
rolls in the pier creaks the seagulls scream
and even when
the sand castles fall and slip under the foamy froth
at the end of each day I stop and listen to
the sails unfurl and the dolphins whisper
in that gurgling way that if
it all was translated
would echo exactly how I feel now that
she is finally here in the flesh and I can
safely say at last the love of my life
has finally returned because the waves
always get bigger and more beautiful when
my mermaid's back in town.
