LETTER FOM HOME

As I draw in a breath,

the pain hits me in the small of the back, 

reminds me as I clean my nails, a letter received,

my lover, and my friend together. 

I cancel my flight home, tell him too much pain.

Need to absorb. Sponge like, my sinuses swell 

and drip replacing shed tears.

Body occupied. Seeming indifference. 

I think, it's a joke they're playing on me. 

I will go home and they'll greet me. 

I read about the mushroom cloud. 

I slam my fist into walls. I doze. 

I cough, the crying comes later. 

Quickly I spread like fire 

from no anger to anger 

then back again to no anger. 

What is this seeming indifference? 

Laws between waves.

The shore below the house, such clear water.
I need the island. Protection Island. Discovery Bay.
Funny how much skin is shed from beneath the cuticle
Dead, it doesn't seem to want to let go.
And I play back old love scenes.
And plans of disappearing acts
Where I'll go, how I'll survive.

Fear of isolation. 

Plans of multiple suicide my body dead, 

as I watch them receive the news.
Self banishment from our intertwined lives.

Visions of a huge sea urchin waving its purple thorns.
I crawl toward it and in the center, 

a shaft, milky white pointing up to the water to the sky. 

The thought of their bodies touching. 

Headless pulsating 

knife in hand I want to sneak in and watch. 

My eyes throwing poison like basilisks to walk on the water.

My body becoming becomes a deep chasm 

and a fan light shell is raising, 

growing outward from the lips 

from the shores of my body
I want to tell him, try and track me down like the Hunter, 

and I will snarl and throw bowls of soup at him. 

I will not yield again. 

This soft mouth has tried 

to coax wholeness out of incomplete shards. 

These hands have tried smoothness on the sand 

where only a rocky shore lies. 

This body has tried to nurture and to heal

With its touch, this body has clung to life, 

never wanting to let go of the dream. 

Now the vacuous heart buries membrane. 

This body wants homelessness, 

and seeks it in an impartial landscape 

of rocky shores, desert sands.

Thin cloud stretched across the sky 

like material played between two hands. 

Whispering pine needles. 

How will my chin raise itself again and it shame? 

Are the resurrections of the heart in dusty hollows,

not shores of blue, gray, and mudstone? 

Where does the last shaft of light come from? 

Where does it go in its final hour?

7/22/81