A Hearty Repast

original poetry cycle
part I (of VII)

I.

I feed upon ghosts
                   (Their ectoplasmic broth is my soup stock)
And dine in silence on the pier.
     I gaze out upon the eerie waters &
      Discard my shell-fears in exchange
                 For sand dollars luminous with promise.
My guilt disowns me, lifts itself:
      A spindly carcass fuming skyward,
       Rising like the blue smoke of dawn.
My scales of memory shed me &
Cast my pink skin into brine;
Flung into saline suspension
I levitate in nebulaic plasma.

Strands black with victory
         Twist through fragmented spacetime;
                Chronotic waves buck the ancient frigate,
Impel its coiling course through
A wilderness of wandering stars.

I fend off floods
  With an ashy wand of heartwood,
Halt the genocide of insects
With a cone of junglous air.
                 Foreboding courses I pursue through
Invisible chasms consume me
With only the merest pause to
        Refresh myself with the water of life
       Which, as it trickles down my spine,
           Bursts my thorn-toes into dreamloam.