water//happiness

The anemones are singing,
Waving their fingers like you do for children.
The octopuses are parachuting,
Dropping hints in ink: there is going to be a novel about this.
My hair has spread out
Into its very own starfish limbs, here,
if you cut off a lock, the lock will grow into another me

Or the lock will clog the bottom of the ocean
And then we'll need to find the plunger kept in that cupboard
In the memory of your first school.

The soap slips away from me like it has newly
discovered walking but from videos of snakes
Or swimmers
: in the water our feet merge: we don't walk
We glide.

I threw away an umbrella and it somersaulted
In the rain, two sparrows have now perched on its handle
Straining their necks to figure out how they could use this
Obvious boat as decoration in their nests.

In the water I am a loop, a squiggle, a haiku
In the water I can bend backwards and stand on my head, in the water
I am the Cirque du Soleil and maybe the crabs
Are waving their staccato pincers
In appreciation of me

In the water I am turned blue as though I am stained glass
And if I break the surface, I am mixed medium art titled
Ways of Breathing: Laughing.

In the water I breathe in salt and liquid and the conversations
That a school of fish whisper in bubbles to me
To telegram to another school
At the other end of the sea.

My green circular plastic tub is expanding
Until I no longer feel its edges.
And if my toe brushes against the edge,
I check for the bottom
Which I use to break through the surface,

A person, a precondition, a fountain.

everything feels like rain

I lie down on the hot, hot floor,
Like in the Lawrence poem;
And think of how everything feels like rain.

The curtains are flapping:
dissected wings taken from a life
that hasn't forgotten how to live.

I am whistling air into them
little whirlwinds, the kind you make when you dance
Without listening to the music.

We have evolved music, dances,
For rain, we have whispered desire to our windows
For rain, we have made little boats out of love notes,
For rain, we have thrown flower petals from our balconies,
For rain, we have looked up at clear skies and
Been downcast when the sky was not.

In the mirror, I have made partings, in my
hair, mouth, dimples, as though we were built
To be little receptacles of rain. The rain itself
Was magical until it could be stored, then it was just
Water. But we cup our hands out and throw
Water at each other. When that isn't enough, we find
Water breaking the road, and we invent a game of, then a word for
Water-hopping, puddle jumping.

Left alone, the umbrella refuses to stand upright,
As though umbrellas were created to ferry rainwater,
But our world then turned curiously upside down.

The water in the tap has become blue, someone let loose bottles of ink in the tank, no one admits to it
Because no one blames anyone, sitting under the tap
Our skin finally matches our mood, maybe finally we will fade
But now, we have little tags reading :
"Specimen may bleed blue when washed".
Imagine us walking in neat lines, turning the roads blue,
Washed.

The train passes by in the nighttime, the floor rumbles
And I feel it in the pit of my stomach, like
I was caught in the middle of thunder.
Tomorrow, I will see you.

I check the flowers I bought for you.
In the hot, hot night, they are white, and lit by
Slivers of drops.
But I have not watered them.

You will thread a flower in your hair,
And the drops will shake off on your ear.
And you'll laugh and say,
"It feels like rain."