in the evening. sky is not
blue for the clouds, it is white
in ways of gray and sheet ghost. the bodies
down below on the ground, many are
hungry for sun’s buttered touch. their eyes black
from behind their fire, coal miner’d vitamin deficiency
and the costumes of their youth, radiant
in their smudging. a sheet ghost
ravenous and gray, its edges pooling
in the tidal fringe of Time’s
muttering pool.
tides billow their bellowing, a slaking
to the chuff of coal eyes, sighing
swirls of soft-serve smoke. it is a feeding
we pursue, our hips rolling
with exotic swell, gathering gray
caps in the sheeted bays
of our ghostly disguise. souls
do not differentiate between mirror
pond and tsunami, shattered
shoreline takes a beating
like the heart. the tide
was earlier high, it is languid
in its retreat. it leaves me
and in solitude i stand on pulsing
shore, a tree at my back, wanting
more. i notice the top
of an onion, the part people cut
off, on the rocks next to me. like me,
having been left by the tide. the green
bay is tonight quiet.
someone must have thrown
their food scraps into a nearby ocean and i see
hunger, floating flotsam on water’s billowing
sheet. as a child i hid
myself in a simple white sheet, smudged
gray by the burning
of bellowing time. through gesture
and sigh i floated above
fading late Fall streets, asking strangers below
for something sweet.
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