Ocean Weight of Summer

The beach glows for a new world
Even though it’s been the same
With pale skies and Moonlit frolic
Of waves that are the measure of time

Our bodies were there beneath
The gulls, the sound the ocean makes
A soft rumble of sea-shell air
The hollow night exhales its mischief

It was all just a canvas for our experience
The crabs, the palm trees, the way
You wanted to sail to the end of the world
Light chooses us and the beach teaches

Us nudity and not to look and how
The sun teases us as our skin changes
With her copper pressure of tangerine smiles
Watching people until there are non

Left, the oceans have always reflected
The punctured stars, under a boulder of June
Ready to sip July champagne, all too soon.

Crying as if from a Dream

We felt the weight of oranges in our limbs
In our loins, we knew we wouldn’t
Be young forever, that even love

Was temporary for a purpose
Driving home, it was all so clear
Your white face, my womb of light

Our electric skin against the
20s something fever of our memoriam
Our permission to be free and reckless
Our dream was the Earth crumbling
And our child could be our redemption

Somehow nature impregnated us with
This little idea, called the future
Each generation fell for it like

The luminous blueprint of tomorrow
We worked so hard just so tomorrow would make it
On time, and in the right way

According to our cultural expectation of it
And if tears could burn in the
Back of our throat, they would now
In the memory of love written on skin
And the promises of forever that seemed
So real and tangible back then….

i held my breath for summers

Light chooses blue surf, pigeon-songs
we sailed until we found ourselves
far away in boats, sailing to nowhere

the ocean’s breeze had a lot to tell us
stabbing the pale skies for forever-afters
we lit our soul with ginger-tea
beneath canopies of star-lit nights
bare legs for the ends of July

beaches for the color of swelling tangerines
with kisses goodbye, but never enough
you were there too, those wispy weekends

full of melodies and cooper sunrise
Light chooses white sails, fragrances
curving like the shorelines, memories
of timelessness, or something beyond
the currents, after the blues, behind

veils, and the taste of your salts
my emotional body was left there
and my cheeks grow weary of so much light

as if sunburns could puncture through
soul mates that amounted to the memory
of women on the beach, bikinis of offering
the dusk hips and wet lips of another time…