I dreamt of a wave that would take you away,
instead I woke up
to the granite counter
and the inside of a cereal box.

The plastic wrapping covered the starch-stained molecules of cinnamon toast crunch
and i, forgetting the milk,
retraced the
outline of my steps back
to the fridge
and reached into the realms of
freezer burn.

I know this seems arbitrary darling,
but you can bet your life I don’t know any other way
i've never been very
economical with words.

I wondered, over the bowl of milk, why I could see the reflection of the ceiling-fan
in the pool nestled in the warm ceramic bosom of a newly washed bowl.
I also wondered why, in the dream, I was on the shore,
waving to you nonchalantly
as you peacefully drowned in the salt water that burned the back of the throat and the eyes if you were dumb enough to open them whilst submerged:
you drowned like a peaceful torture,
baby, a slow motion,
tantalizing death.
Grim wet his lips with lust as you sank down,
white skin waterlogged sun perforating
the waves and reaching your
peacefully drowning body.

When the wave swept me away, when It was my turn to
drown in the vast expanse of waves and rocks and islands, I was a fool.
I opened my eyes, and attempted to resurface
so I could rub the stinging red planets against the micro universe on my sleeve
and make everything ok
and comfortable again.

I just made a mess of the only tranquility I have ever known.

With a plastic coffee mug
in my hand I walk past
the divers stowing
scuba tanks in the first floor
lockers.

I’m silently sipping and brooding as I pass by all of the sea- creatures in the submarine,
and the red light flashes!
The mollusk attaches onto the
salt soaked whale
and they sink, stained
by the cosmic reaches of
forgotten echolocation,
swimming in the depths toward
first period English Honors:
I observe.
Jacques Cousteau would be proud.

Danger, danger, oh I know right? First period or second period
it doesn't matter where I am
I am always late like
a delayed, late blooming
flowering anenome
I too miss out on all the little
clown fish that call my name.

The squealing siren period bell regurgitates thoughts of danger and tardiness,
mirroring how
I regurgitate bad frequencies into the air,
leaning into your mouth and feeding you them like a mother eagle
or a mother whale, or a mother
squid.

The sea creatures purge upwards and surface for a little while,
eating pop tarts and
pizza, and talking until
good ol' H20 kicks in and
they choke and nearly die,
only to swiftly duck back under the water,
the way a boxer would
duck and weave
to avoid punches.

Flashback! It’s getting late and one scuba diver is going too
fast around the curves and bends on Route One,
and this
scuba diver is a little drunk
soon
this cuba diver is dead.

Every other sea creature weeps
but the tears are just bubbles, like god said 'to hell with it darling!'
and took a bath in the tears of the octopus, leaving
I, the Squid.
I will feed on the fears
of the dead and
become one of the dead myself
strangling myself with
my own elongated tentacle,
screaming "DRY ME UP DRY ME UP
DRY ME UP I DON'T
WISH TO SWIM NO MORE"

I forgot that
there will be rest in the
pounding sea, rocks
churning and grinding
howling hurricanes,
spirits resting on the
green islands, finding
rest in the pounding waves.

Last night I dreamt of
a wave that was as big as you
or me
or god
or life or love,
as big as any human thought or idea, a wave so large
it could spill over the mountaintops and stain them white
and catch all the airplanes that fly over the sea and morph them into gulls
and fish and whales

And oh lord I don't know when
I will awake to death
but I'm kind of sure it will be
on a city bus, as I stare at the organs of a newspaper or the guts of televised warfare in the terrorist Colosseum,
After I awake for good maybe kind ol' saint peter
will let me go swimming in the wave that consumed me for a little while.

I'll doggy paddle over the memory of my first car
Doggy paddle over my 18th birthday, and when I lost my virginity.

I'll doggy paddle over the remnants of my high school and look as the fish
impregnate the other
fish
and as the squids fall in love with all the other squids,

And I'll look back at
my pitiful memories of life in this aquarium,
and I'll see myself singing
'Amazing grace how sweet the'
stop sleeping now awake falling apart
'I once' oh i still am, 'was lost
'but now i'm found'
i never found you d*** i miss you so much man

But everything will be ok
in the arms of
a cloud.
crying won’t be allowed,
as i take your hand and we doggy paddle
over the wreck on route one
where you died-
none of that will matter.

we’ll resurface slowly so we
don’t get the bends
and the god of the sea
will live with us forever
crying won’t be allowed, but
singing will be allowed

‘amazing grace, how sweet the sound
that saved a wrench like me
I once was lost, but now I’m found’
because I awoke from this dream
this Illiad of a Dream