The Wavement of the Brook

Today I downed [stream water]

and did not count the carbs.

Bottled it without a word

and tucked it ‘neath my arms.

Relief bent me down, like in a dream,

put back my hair with a violet.

I knew and so did she

that as my body lurched in slipping quiet,

the rest of me would careen.

To the [water] I dipped my lips,

tensed the smoke between my hips.

Down below, he quivered.

And Fear herself might have shivered.

My plastic would never do,

not when I had savoured [snow].

I had never tasted so.

I touched it. 

Beaten against and smoothed out by rocks,

it was a rabbit and I the fox.

It proved so cool, so fresh,

that Doubt himself did vanish.

Reach, [drink], taste, splash,

This could raise the dead fish from ash.

The birds above, they lectured me,

while I tucked some of it a-way.

Them—jealous nymphs—were sure to see

that I was the seizure of the day.

And…

While music began to play,

Calm threw her scarf and plucked off her shoes.

She pushed my head beneath the [waves],

gulped me down like whiskey booze.

The music swelled and still I had

a curious desperation

to see if I could drink it all

out of honest fascination.

They were violins that played

and a guitar right off there swayed.

In the silence of these chilling woods,

Dirt and Beauty decided to stay.

The juices of their bodies, while rare

were toasted rosemary in the air.

And heat did form within my throat.

Bile. 

Which became a certain kind of moat

to separate me from the splendor.

Of the [water] forever.

And the smell.

It tasted of spiced plums and cherries

Ju bi lee…

Where did it lose and where won me?

Had the smoke down within stopped its burn?

I began to feel my stomach turn.

Where perhaps Love made a sort of Hell,

my belly just continued

to 

swell.

And yet the throat of the world had not yelled called out,

so to my own divine I gave my shout.

Clothèd vesper, he descend’d indeed.

But it was not yellow Grace, his name was Greed.

And then I began to shiver.

The weight of my hips sent up a stink,

while there panged out a cry from my liv’r.

The sound of Regret on the boards of my floors

came on his feet with a smiling creak.