To Steal a Wife

the old coast is rocky and long, jagged and filled with colorful and tough things living half their lives in salt under the icy Labrador current out of Newfoundland, and half their lives under the sun in pools at low tide

if you see a girl at peace in the sun, on the rocks, in the pools at low tide, look for a warm comfortable skin, the only thing she owns in the world

for it is her power to transform:

to choose who and where to be

if you keep it, they say she makes an excellent wife
they also say she will be sad all her days but still they say
take it.

they say it to fishermen but men aren’t the only lonely beach walkers, are they?
take it.
what use is transformation, to an excellent wife? what use is leaving?
whose hands but yours could her stolen skin ever need to feel?

Shave and a Haircut

If I were a toon, this would be easier.
My feelings could escape however
whenever
as whatever
they needed.

When you tell me nobody has called you adorable since 1999
but in 2000 I started carrying a torch for you and never stopped
I cannot prove you wrong.

Tamping the secret down inside
this well-worn bottle of mine
resistance of compromising confidences is unconscious
I cannot speak of this
but that’s all right,
because I cannot speak this.

As a secondary measure my body
gives way to strange impulses
it wants to split open and
spray joyous trilling organs from its cracks,
raining candied memories in your lap.

If I were a toon, this would be easier.