While salt and blood mix in your throat,
And your lungs fight hot against the foam,
Your mind aches for that concluding note,
And yearns to follow the melody home.

The second-last chord lingers high
And hovers on the cusp of keys,
To hear the finale, you have to die,
And abandon your body to the seas.

To be rescued now will leave you pining
For the drowning song: death’s sweet chiming.

Let me soak in a concerto
Ease my shoulders, my neck, my mind,
Erase the day’s attentive bind
With music, strong and bold.

Dry me with a frisky tango
Let it warm me up and wake me,
Refreshen me and shake me:
This music electric and alive.

Put me to bed with a final canon,
Remind me of our species’ highest,
Of the happiness the music inspires,
Of the music, clear and calming.

Love’s got guts:
Like good dogs got bite,
Like good drums got tight;
Like good minds got fight.

Love can argue and it can lose;
It doesn’t sulk and whine and bruise:
True love bickers and laughs it off:
It plays rough, stands steady, speaks soft.

To love is not to mince and sigh:
Love’s got teeth and a sharpened eye.
Love’s got boots to tramp sissies beneath.
Love’s got guts and love’s got teeth.

Bless me ducky, that I may seem,
Like thou, soft and benign as cream;
Politely eluding the predator’s beam,
By smoothly departing as swift as a dream.

Bless me ducky, that I will be
As gentle, calm and happy as thee;
With apt feet and cheerful buoyancy,
May I show ducky’s joyful gentility.

Then I rush and cheer and splash,
Foam and leap over the rocks in the way.
You are the rain that breaks the drought,
You rush me from fountainhead to bay.

For making things simple, I give thanks to light switches
And wish my every decision was as free of hitches.

Then, after years of true loyal service
swaggering angled provocatively
as I lilt toewards, to tip and back,
rocking my adult legs, my thighs,
after years of footwear fidelis felicitous:
a bespectacled order: tiptoes no more.

Weeping and shameful, I sent them away,
bundled into the annual charity bags.
Swapped my slender skyscraper slips
for sturdy and flat, reassuring robust,
arch supporting, humble and logical shoes.
I let out my hems to cover my failure:
I lowered my belt to hide them from eyes:
I ignored the relief and the ease in my back,
I defied the new painless state of my thighs.

Until I saw sexy slimline stilettos,
smirking at me from glassy store windows,
and felt nothing: no urge and no yearning;
so discovered a bliss in my off-roadable shoes,
gentle and kind on my feet and my knees,
letting me walk without being displayed.
I surrendered the last scrap of foolish seduction
to the promises of joy from the high heeled brigade.

She wanted to smell the oil in the peel,
wanted to crunch the pits in her teeth,
Wanted to tear at the cold sweet pith,
and break open the capsules of juice beneath.

Her belly swelled round, it seemed to glow,
from the nectar of thousands of fruits;
the nourishing oranges enriched her blood,
the baby planted deep juice-drinking roots.

She looked underfed, aside from her roundness,
her cheekbones hollowed; I stopped sleeping;
she sat up in bed, miserably sucking oranges,
too crippled, distracted, and exhausted for weeping.

We waited awake, I laying, her propped,
we waited for dawn and the baby to come:
she suddenly dozed, dropped half an orange;
she snored, with a rich, somnasalant hum.

She woke hours later: I’ve never seen eyes
that so glowed with thirst of weariness slaked.
"Do you want an orange or something?" I asked;
She grimaced playfully: "I want carrot cake."

She looked over at me, dared disapproval,
Hoped to provoke a fight she could win:
I undid my shoelaces and sipped on my tea,
and waited for her impatience to finally give in.

Once she had sucked the cigarette hollow,
without actually having inhaled the smoke,
she began her predictable, petulant tirade:
how her uni is useless, our culture a joke.

How injustice is rife and cruelty free;
and nobody cares enough to set it to right:
How her unpopular perspective gets so often discarded,
and how she and her boyfriend had a mean, ugly fight.

Now she had got to it, I gave her a hug:
there was the splinter; there was the thorn,
She pouted and said she should be above the huffs:
it was too like the people she would usually scorn.

But hurt she still was, and regretful as well,
so I soothed her sore feelings and coaxed her to laugh;
By the time my friend left, she was embarrassed but hopeful,
and our culture, she decided, was just lovably daft.

But switch on the box, turn on the news, and see if you unwind:
See if you really can ignore the grim social design;
See if you’ve got the strength to blot it from your eyes:
It takes a lot of motivation to stay securely blind.

The slap of the unfairness of our given social forms;
Has awoken and enraged me, makes me want to fight these norms.
But how to rouse an army when the softer, kinder path,
Is the one that shrugs it off and at resisters laughs?

Stir the pot with a tiny spoon; agitate just slightly;
Wake them up with questions, facts; ask them to live rightly:
Don’t force the matter, just give nudges; their consciousness will come:
And soon you’ll find them marching to your justly outraged drum.