fleet air arm

fatherhood, you are reduced
to the status of Aircraft Carrier

your not-inconsiderable bulk and attendant
fleet so many enclosed emptinesses

in service to the planes
the planes, with all their takeoffs

their dangerous
landings

refraction

Too long it's been
too long
since i've been down
to this coast   and out
along the promontory where my sea bashes
pulsing
on my rocks.

Water-words nibble and worry and drip at
my soft sandstone underbelly:
phrases spinning on a wire-wheel wind
strip and shape my dunes,
and mountainous huge whole
weed-wracked poems bight
my continent in that part where, thighs
spread, things once borne under water
loll & roll in the muck
of an ebb tide.  My apostles, paragraphs,
erode erode
twelve, eleven...
my seven sisters six..
these penurious countdowns
toward some feeble sputtering
blastoff - five vowels
here, in the roaring four-three-two

    one

   more
ejaculation
should do it my sea
will cover my land.  splashdown -
there'll be no more walking then;   no
coast patrols..

for an epoch, needs must, i will swim

fragment from a handheld device #7

See how high it jumps:
the blood
before it dies away

fragment from a handheld device #6

mare's tails in the sky
who's gonna ride
these wild horses?

fragment from a handheld device #5

who would know better than we

to fear

the ones who come in boats?

oyster

(fragment from a handheld device)

these accretions

stronger than the rock

to which they bind

supposition

the air is surely thick

with the ghosts of birds

the air is surely coloured by arc and swoop

clouded by song and call

the earth is surely syruped

with birdblood

the earth is surely torn by talon and beak

and made ragged with soft feathers

the air is surely heated by their falling

and carcasses must nest

in the cool earth.

     and with every breath

most surely,  the ghosts

of birds