Eric Gurney
Push offshore across the Pacific
high pressure builds the high will.
Build and hold the area
approaching luminous waters.
Come, sit at my table
of plums and penumbras
penstemon and logic.
Living on an amoral plane/planet
in a morally ambiguous system
I left my house in universe A.
Perdition, from perdér, to lose.
Pithecanthropos, admit the worms of the senses.
We have evolved from loss, the delightful
ambiguity of light.
As another low crosses the waters and approaches
move away from the area
a coastal trough strengthening offshore
where systems will cross.
Continue to pressure the system
significant force expected to foreshadow
storms and shadows offshore.
Hazardous observations quicken Odin.
It is an act of transparency
tearing at the edges
the very thereness of the world
whether you wake up or not.
Only when the opacity dissolves
the shark appears
the whole perceptible sky the color of a bruise.
It has been raining, it is raining and it is going to rain.
The pain of being a metaphysical creature accrues.
Swell will peak to 16 feet west of the will
evening becoming numerous and scattered
a man with a handful of sand
to isolate the hazardous past.
A southerly surge approaches the W
the whole region increasing under fog
followed by faceless features of soggy light.
Holes for eyes, Odin hardly moves.
Sticks, branches and logs
the beach gathered and strewn.
Bones. All bones.-
Dinosaur, deer, bird, rodent. Human.
It is human to say so, to admit
the resemblance through the same circuit
as the vulture perched on the sea lion carcass
while the ocean roars
echoes against basalt, slate
silt and sand in the salt wind where a line
of cormorants wavers over whitewash
and vanishes.
Lava cools to form basalt.
A little slower
into teeth crystallize the complexity of patterns.
The ocean moves through the same circuit
of desire, a thousand creases
the vulture perched on the sea-
lion carcass, a blue straw from some fast food or gas
station dispenser. Wild strawberry patches the upper beach
above which yarrow and lupine.
It is human to pattern movement against the tide
as the tide with its thousand teeth
pulls back against the patterns
against the bones.
Southerly gales followed by a wave of showers
push Odin inland overnight
the small craft plunging forward and back
large swell, gorms and cobblies in the gulf of Ak.
Coupled with a low trough a rough system
over the Pacific is causing broad
northerly winds, weakened gradients resulting
in visible forms along the coast.
Legos and Lincoln Logs
Logos, the rope between the man-boy
and the buoy in the fog.
At Gettysburg not a dress on a single body
therefore civil.
Your head on a swivel
named Polaris
go north
where the wind is a ferris wheel.
There is a rope in the knot.
Whole centuries of thought to obliterate
the distinction between outside and in.
Whole cemeteries.
The ocean glistens
rushes white on green.
Listen.
Moving the cross south
across the northern waters
waters the mouth, the shark
approaching the small craft.
Winds and seas expected to ease up
a bit of W on the cross
between the small craft anchored offshore
and a red chain 15 feet from the shark.
Whatever's born of fire
is fire. The ocean
scatters the beach with logs.
Whatever is not in the fire will rot
the thought of you standing
on a beached log whose body glimmers
like the fur of a marine mammal.
Dark blue waves unravel
a form of sublime longing
how long it takes
the ocean to burn.
The sun stands on the edge of the sea
erases your face, erases the log
the Logos the only meat.
As the low migrates inland the high regains strength.
A steep pressure gradient between the O and the E
will push offshore a stronger will, the length
of its chain diminishing in the sea.
As a thick surface low intensifies the interior
a thermal high presses the will to move
inland, the bridge between human and O
edge-lit beneath a yellow moon.
Above a tree-lined cliff above the sea
a California gull hovers.
Now a pelican. It's magic
you continue
to be fooled. The fact that they are flying
have flown and will fly
an ordinary miracle
a ghost in the heart.
It's something you get used
you almost get used to.
Pressure the waters toward track E.
While the will clings to the buoy
a body of light between areas of fog
invisible forms build offshore.
Arrive at the forecast and traverse.
A frontal boundary will disperse the will
followed by large swell growing stronger
pelicans strung above tall dark walls falling.
Icarus, what is your name?
There is no future.
There is no past tense in a dream.
There was an intention. I was intentional
a courageous fool.
How do you feel? asks the ghost.
I mean, how do you do it?
Light the inner waters and flow.
Pressure intensifies below pelicans
mixed swell, wax melting
under a man with nowhere to go.
e-mail the poet at ejgurney@netzero.net
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