You say that you understand what I write while 

soaring violin trills brush your neck while

sweetheart necklines and pearls are cupped in

erratic, ruddy hands.

Perhaps, your music is so pleasant that it cleans us away 

Rung out like old towels 

Rid of our dirt

I worry for

Those bright, blinding eyes

 and cotton stuffed ears

You have to

So sweetly mute you

How much of loving is bliss?

Do you know?

It’s left my memory, so much so

     I’ve forgotten how to stay and keep and 

       Not   leave memories. The same way fall leaves summer for a colder winter

I leave experience like a lone string to a dinghy 

    on a dock with no sailors

    atop an ocean of riches

        and poetic fish gorging so far beneath the light of

            The surface

    in gluttoness spendor that does nothing to fill, to satisfy or even feed

My love, your skin is touching scales now

Your hands on gills

I beg you not to touch me

A glowing daze you reflect on a vacant, wholly pupil stare

I wonder in this if we are even looking at each other.

You whisper between your teeth

“My  poet”-

Another scaled…

    liverspotted..

        mottled  sorrow

“You are in love with your misery”

And if these resin eyes could move

and fleshless lips could speak

I would look to you and say, “And you are in love with yourself”

I refuse to lie

Because, and fool I tell you now, “You can not teach a fish to breathe when it has spent its whole life drowning.”