Wild Sea - Mark Eitzel

Inside he’s empty

A head filled with shopping lists and politics

And a hollow eggshell kind of frailty

Pulling himself back together like desperate wishes

Into the wild sea that moans and boils

Filled with old ghosts and a whole other language

Uncoiling forever

Indecent and foreign

Welcome to the laws of decay

The song of Darwin and dismay

The wild sea rises higher

Heavier it rushes down on him

It was invited, it was not unwelcome

His fear was just a 60 watt silver lining

Shining from the edges of his crying

Teaching him its frozen prayers

Distant as the next second

Far as any distant land’s future on the horizon

He’s laughing in the ocean

Laughing in the ocean

Laughing in the ocean

All his life was a gesture

A check paid in dirty dishes

Listen to the sea wind, hear how it hisses

As it rolls over all your vain petty wishes

And your sweet passionate kisses

The wild, wild sea

Forever dumb, it has no memory

Just a replay of your complicated amnesty

As it rolls over rocks and weed breaking your birdcage

And your poet’s pages

And all your drowned words

That were just death threats and unpaid debts

And leaves you breathless and peaceful for a while

And you think your heart is without hate for a while

And you think your soul is without hate for a while

And your body was an animal that loved to hide

See the source of your heart buried deep in the tide

See the source of your heart singing from the tide

Lonely joy

Lonely joy

Tears of joy

The source of your heart deep in the undertow

Hidden tongues and hidden hands pulling you from below

To the source of your pain

The source of your pain in the undertow