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A Cry For Kelp (Mad Agriculture) →

December 08, 2020

I remember being in the shallows. Little floaties hugging my little arms. Goggles on, face down, blowing bubbles. Coming up for air with lots of snot and flapping arms. Then heading back down again to accidentally drink pool water.

We learn at a young age that underwater, the breath of life pirouettes towards the surface in bubbles. We also learn pretty quickly, when we emerge gasping, that the bubbles eventually run out. It’s in water that we can finally see the invisible air that pumps our heart, the invisible air that we suppose is always kind of just hanging there, the invisible domain that we now take for granted.

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Read the full article ↩︎

(Mad Agriculture’s Journal is a print magazine but you can read an online version too)

I could have been on a boat

would have liked to

a boat would be nice but

if I can’t have a boat

I would like to just fall asleep

when my credits roll

to fall asleep right at the end

at that small jut

where the audience thinks maybe

there’s another scene surely

it can’t end now

and they don’t know

or want to but wait

to see if the darkness continues

then music begins from

somewhere behind and

the words rise up

the credits roll

I’d just fall asleep then.

Imagine

having five grand.

(overheard)

When the sun sets

before the night

and I’m riding

down the three-lane

barely lit, moving,

knuckles white

the rushing air from passing cars

to my right;

the curb is always close.

There’s a certain numbness:

winter’s night,

gloveless hands, lost

love, depression –

moving towards the orange light,

near red.

I grip the bars,

shaking,

facing the intersection

and sailing through,

nearly missing.

The sound of a rock

underarmed

into the shallows

is louder than

the sound of a thousand

handfuls

of tossed sand.

The gait of a wingless bird

inside a circle

of hands and feet.

Sometimes I feel like a brick.

A brick in a pavement,

on a wall,

up a church,

inside a chimney.

There are other bricks.