1
On deck the man is cradling a large fish for the camera; its silver skin flows lightly over heavy hands. He talks about the fish, admires form and muscled ocean-art. The fish is calm, moves like it’s breathing. He extends one curving gill, careful with the structure raised now like a wing about to catch the wind. Arced like a wave about to fall. The fish is breathing, drowning gracefully.

2
There is no space for me in yours. Not really, not even in imagination’s optimistic scanning of the broken clutter. Headless gothic lamps support two dolls and pictures of your love, lost in suicide. Your morphine tablets lie, scattered seed at her goddess feet. Her dainty feet, bare and fading, behind dusty glass. She stands alone for the camera. Her gaze is always to the right of you, no matter where you stand. No matter where I stand. No contact with the past,  just the constant thought of it. You talk about her carefully. Admire her nature, note how her essence shone when you took away the colours that she loved to wear. She never needed them to be beautiful, you crow. I am flowing from your hands, trying to remember why I will not meet your eye, why I hold my breath when it seems that you might speak.

Six years ago we smiled and talked anew of hammer drills and trucks, the grand design and beloved demons. Two hundred miles changed everything. It’s weird how I felt nothing when your heart stopped.
How the steady pulse of rain on road still travels through dark hands.

I scribble dreams on sheets; fold them, carefully, around me. It isn’t that they’re fragile. I just want to wear them all, smudge them and wake covered in their ink.

They think you’re dead. Dust on the ocean. Fish food now.

Dead has four letters, one repeat so three. And dea isn’t a word in English so it’s incomplete or something else. A prelude maybe.

Always has six letters, one repeat so five. Not counting decades of linguistic change – they change numbers and geometry. All wayes. Not even just one word, hey?

Then there’s the big bad book. Now that nails mind and perspective to a fishing rod destined to stay empty. Some bait, huh? Do fish count the days to their next meal?

Forget the words and numbers.
Everything is lost if translation lacks a heart.

You don’t have to try that hard to see a full moon all the time no matter what the quadrant says.

By the way, life has four letters. No repeats. Soul food for the gods?

Tail lights glitter. Sawdust on ten thousand miles of ice and desert, chrome and mud. Between here and dawn, now and then. Where in hell are you? Dante ain’t seen nothin’ yet. He should talk to me.