Stephen Nelson

Water Myths

Within you the ocean, and the rains refresh
my walk along the burn to the retail park
where my writing hand is dipped in ink and coffee.
The wind on Canadian waters is the first
snow goose to drop crocuses on our love
after months of suffocating alchemy.
You asked if I was shy; I stumbled and
put aside a too long sexual insouciance. Now
you pour water and my groin is grown
like gardens. Still the dry earth needs you;
I need you and your mouth and voice
are seeds of meetings at a Pentecostal airport.
Your tongue — suggestion, imagination, the shimmer
of the lakes on my skin, my cheek, my shit-hot
prophetic porn flick lick and suck until I sink
my Shivaite awareness in you. Then, please, dance on me,
                                                                                                          softly.

Tonight you called and the madness rushed
between us like a screaming turbo take-off. Calm,
I said, and you growled into my palm and hid
from the world on a mountain laced with gold.
Most of what I know is locked in underground vaults
with Sumerian deities, but somehow you seep
through layers to my mineral heart and forge
a Vulcan destiny. We could watch movies together,
or make mythology quiver on an aromatic bed.
I see your life from space, it seems, on a pixelated
monitor, sucking noodles, chewing broccoli,
drinking tea from impossibly decadent cups;
I reach into the screen and you reach right back —
thunder hammering the ocean. Meanwhile,
there’s an earthquake in Saskatchewan, and a child
who laughs between us with a cougar on her shoulder,
                                                                                                    napping.

It’s easy, when the Universe is eiderdown.

Stephen Nelson is the author of Lunar Poems for New Religions (KFS Press), Thorn Corners (erbacce-press), and Arcturian Punctuation (Xexoxial Editions). He has exhibited vispo internationally and once featured in The Sunday Times Poet’s Corner. He has published poetry in numerous magazines, recently including Streetcake, 3am, Posit and Poetry Scotland, and blogs vispo and asemic writing at www.afterlights-vispo.tumblr.com.
 
 
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