Taking on Water

Taking on Water

Water, you cork and dole

your benevolence

like it were her first 
scotch caught

on the tongue, the ghost 
a flake of peat sifted--

flaked and sifted--  

the bottom of a barrel 

all raw, water I am 

lying in you now

and I let go this my final fix:

my breath.  When I fell

into you, fusty 

cellar, some vague shade closed
over my head.  It was a sloe 
I couldn't open

my eyes in.  I couldn't,

not at first, touch

the dry side

of your spine.  

And heavy, 

I was water, I was water to your 
rock, I was

barefoot

on the filmy floor

of your  lonesome stones standing...

When it’s finally black dark, when finally the air

in my lungs flutters, 

I don’t want to give  

you my last flask

of gas.  I puff.  I knock

against all the other holders
and puffers: arms and legs and eyes
that squint

into the one or two rails of light.

They're like stairs you know? and

I’m knocked, again

and again.  

                                   Until finally.

Finally.

Finally

I am tired.      

So what if I don’t have enough.

So what when I let the last of me out into you…

So what when I drop off of my cliff of lung…

So what when my jaw shuts

and locks her bulk-head door…

the shimmer goes out

            (and it goes out

                        completely)

I think: this is

            dying

            this must be dying

            this different liquid I’m in

            is dying is drowning is dying

            is suffocating dying

and I’m the last living

thing in this wet world.  After

the nail-digging, after the lips in a furious kiss,

after the stiff grip,

the last surge of this gas hiss

you are all I have

left.  I’m letting me get blue and balloon true,

into my own I’m getting gone.

Into my own I’m simply gone across the bridge.

No one has to tell me me what to do.  
But you know what?
I've known this.  

I know this like it’s habit.  I’m doing it
like I should.

I doing it exactly.   
I'm kinder, yes, than you.