izzy

there’s this guy on the metro, rolling his eyes
like back in his head, like he could be dead
any minute now
and he’s swaying, he’s swaying like
he wants to fuck this train from the inside
or at least romance it
the same words scrawling out of his mouth
sliding over the lino floor in waves
saying something that my tired brain translates as
girls the sluts the shit the death
over and over and over again

*

sarah

Come, child, push through the breakers
Past the roaring waves and the keening gulls
Deep on down, through the dragging tides
Past the teeming shoals of unblinking fish
Through the hasty chattering of barnacled shells
Fall into the deep down dark.
A thousand fathoms below the surf
A thousand above the crawling black trenches
The light hangs suspended in shimmering casts
Of the deepest, sweetest blue.
Here, time settles softly like dust in the air
And the silence is fat and thick and perfect
Chorded with the echoed moan of whalesong
Music as old as the world.
As the continents shift their rocky great roots
And vast heady shadows nose far, far away
Wisdom nudges past like a circling catfish
And the universe murmurs in a sliver of sun.
Come you storm-tossed and wind-wracked sailor
Come and seek shelter from the whims of the world
Lay your head for a while in the arms of the ocean
And find succour in the stillness of the whispering waves.

*