Rex Marinus (Dec. 3, 2004)

I ran from my old man
and took to a dark sea
of strange women and
malt whiskey, becoming
in that nekyia the little
man in the boat, an
old man tossed on
Your sea. Years of
spiralling round that
singular tide, seeking
rebirth, or at least
a dolphin enough
name for my purpose
which could ride
me to shore at last.
But as such waters
devour as they embrace,
my tutelage was
infernal, wraith-like,
and finny, all my arts
foundering between
huge waves. That night
lasted for 300 years,
it seemed, until at
last, until I found
a way to build a chapel
of voyaging stone,
a house which gave
my errancy an oar.
Daily now I row those
dark brine haunts
which I once thought
dove between my
love’s sweet breasts:
fructive poems whose
mortar is ferried
from the sea inside
that ancient sea,
jotted in squid ink.
A different dad might
have made a different
son -- bank president
or father of eight,
a builder or foundryman:
But, sired himself
in Oran’s perplex cry
and milked in
Onan’s shade, that
old wild man loved me
only as he knew how.
Which meant while he
was raising stones
I was skipping town, in
love with the feel of water
on my feet below, the night
sea huge and potent
and a riven swart blue,
sweet and dangerous
as every woman I found
out there who nursed
me to the same steely
glare my father
basks upon the space
his absent son
cries for old stone.