Dylan (Monday, Feb. 21, 2005)

My demon twin still rides the wave
unrepentant, torn, and free,
a music-making mouth astride
the white mare of all shores,
singing salt hecatombs
inside the wombs of shells.
Darkling prince with the grey
blue cloak, he contests my day-
bride wooings by riding far below
where only women in their deepest
thrall have dared to go, their
drowning hair curved round the
prow that I, proud man of a
wretched faith, point ever toward
the next isle she once called
me from. In my drinking days
I swore I had a twin named
Steve who was my blackout self,
emerging when I clocked out
to fang the throat of 2 a.m.,
dancing in the bottle clubs
with drownlettes or alone, a
man of plunder and a fool’s
blue greed. When I woke
sometime later that next day
he was gone, leaving behind
cuts and bruises on my arms,
the press of a woman’s ankles
on my back and shoulders,
my hips ground to raw points
of cooling fire. The sea-man
is like my Steve but swims
a deeper malt than booze.
He’s out there just beyond
all shores with his blue guitar,
singing the sweet matins of
desire inside each wave’s
approaching curl. He and I
were born of one womb, and
though for years we’ve wandered
far and farther apart, there
is a land we share, of seas
and shores composed --
a mutual embroilment
of song in water metres,
a soul which shires both
priest and prick, somehow
both reliquary of God’s
star glow and the tinkling
of heavy hairy balls below.
Dylan Eil Ton is my
blue brother in the undertow
while I sit here, the sum
of all the nights I drank
more than three beers,
those three cups which
he spilled gold and frothing
on the bosom of the fraulein
who lives inside my wife.
That darkling pair frolic
and writhe wildly beneath
this pillar of salt which is
my writing chair, pagan
slips descending down
a primordially dark stair
which is infernal measure
to my day-song’s sweet
ascending up into -- oh my!
heaven’s lacy blue underwear