I once shared a maritime border with a boy so addicted to water
he couldn’t stop waving.
He had a buoyancy about him.
He had a hard time being anchored to anything that weighed him down.
He was high tide and flood warning and he couldn’t stand wading.

It was the fin on his back that gave him away -
told me a whole lot about who he was and who he consumed
and I still can't get the salt white stale taste of his bite
off the back of my tongue.

Some people use ego as a flotation device
so that when the water levels rise they stay afloat.
Meanwhile the rest of us take deep breaths and submerge ourselves
as we wax hysteric 'bout how we're down here lookin' for gold,
searching for the lost city of AT LAST, US!
How we're down here lookin' for the ship we sank with confidence.

At last, US, pretending
we're down here discovering
when the truth is as clear as my lack of gills,
we'll be up for air soon - egos
just waitin' on the high tide
to carry us all back to believing in our selves.

Believing in our bloodmoving heartbeat lungfiller,
believing in things we can't even see, literally,
believing that when Midnight calls us into her arms
it is best to close eyes, anchor fears and give in,
because we sleep when the sky tells us too,
says her moon attracts the ocean,
says when they get going, things get tidal.

Like that one time I consumed too much high-fructose corn syrup before bed
and had a nightmare that I could fly,
spread arms and took to the sky - lost control
scraped bare belly on pavement,
woke up tired and in pain.
Unable to go back to sleep I held conversation with Moon
about how I once shared a maritime border with an ocean so afraid of evaporating
she had to swell and crest and break just to make her presence known.

Moon and I, we remember a time when the ocean was just ocean
and the sky, just sky,
when people were just people.
We remember a time before we learned about depth and layers and ... people,
how they themselves can be as deep and dark and as unexplored as oceans.

How to put this delicately, your ego, though just as delicate,
is much larger than a butterfly wing, you know what I'm sayin'
and I'm not trying to be mean, I mean, I'm not trying.
I'm reachin’ out to you in hopes that we can share your flotation device,
because the ocean, is carnivorous
and the sky, is ambivalent
and I'm, just tired

of holding my breath
waitingforthesurface waitingforthesurface waitingforthe...

Here I am.
Doggy paddle breast stroke and butterfly,
kickin’ my feet to stay alive.

Too often I get sucker-punched-drunk by a moment,
I get so dizzy from falling off myself that I forget
that people like you are my parachutes.
I forget from scraping my chest so often,
I forget that your ego is just your confident way of saying,
“Hey stupid,
I've got you by your shoulders.
I'm right here when you need me.
I'll be open and we'll fall
together
slowly.”

And there you are again, Ocean
with the support of the sky.

08/19/2010

Author's Note: I have been re-working this poem. Trying to get it right.

Posted on 08/19/2010
Copyright © 2024 Frankie Sanchez