Three other personal favorites posted here in honor of May’s 12-year anniversary of The Oxytocin Opera (Click Here to Find It!) “Coda” and “Encore” are the last two poems in the collection. It really takes me back to writing them by posting some of these collection pieces this month. Until next time, enjoy!

Another Ocean Poem

The lull of the waves… it doesn’t say your name like it used to.
But sometimes the moon, hanging like a rusting chandelier, sometimes it highlights the letters of your name on foaming crests of breaking waves.
There are the ghosts of ancient heroes riding on the wind, and exhausted mythologies lie broken inside sea shells and within the bones of the sand.
And I’m still not sure where the buried treasure lies.  I’ve never seen an Ex that clearly marked the spot.
But if I lie on this shore and close my eyes, the shapes and names of all the people I’ve ever known light up behind lightless lids.  They will be safe in there and I’m happy to keep them.
There are some words inside my head I’ve hushed so many times that maybe they won’t ever really speak anymore, even if I start to miss them.
I wish some of our words would have sounded prettier.
There are some thoughts I’m more afraid of than the feelings they build in me like sandcastles, knowing a wave is coming for them someday, they just don’t know when and how.
There is a slapstick comedy buried somewhere in my right hand, yet its bones don’t always remember the words and lines.
And far below the waves, there are bodies hiding within seaweed and secrets, too young and clinging to the ocean floor like barnacles on a boat.
If you could find them and touch them, they would sting worse than a thousand jellyfish.
If they decided to surface now from these Atlantic tombs, heads rising like miniature submarines to reach unbent light, maybe they would watch me watching the moon on the shore, waves licking my bare feet like a grateful dog’s tongue after its Master comes home for the evening.
Maybe they would watch me with eyes that never saw, and maybe they would say in virgin tongues, “Well, where have you been?  The water’s perfect.  Come on in.”

There is a select collection of unused names living under my tongue.  
I’ve been happy to keep them safe there.
I whisper the names, let them fall to be carried with the smells of the ocean air to other shorelines.
To be laid to rest with those bodies of the sea.
They wink, smile and sink and are glad to now hold my unused names like Blackbeard’s buried treasure.
Because no one should go have to go through death without knowing a name to answer to.

Coda

Are all these notes nothing 
more than a decision to live
with a fuller love found
inside a firewall of code?
Despite what you have heard and seen,
there was laughter streaking 
down apartment and house walls,
like fresh paint with not enough surface
to hold on to.
A crescendo of smiles and clutched hands
powered these rooms
like two matching solar panels 
on the roof holding 
all daylight.
Just like you know
that Styrofoam and Paper Mache 
tombstones on dry, late October lawns
symbolize much more than a post harvest holiday
your children and friends love to play dress up for.
How you know that behind these stones
of such miniature deaths,
there is always one more life to find.
One more fine grain of sunlight
to feel between index finger and thumb
and examine
under a set of hard squinting eyes.

Encore

The curtain falls.  
The venue lights go on. 
Smoke still coats the stage, 
starting its gradual promotion to the ceiling 
like a crowded bar at last call.  
The final note curls up inside now warm eardrums,
still ringing.  
It is a distorted and jarring note
we won’t soon forget.  
Still, the last song is meant to make us 
happy we even get to hear one more, 
even if some of the chords sound sad.  
Cause somewhere between all that sound 
making a home inside our ears, we realize…

The next show can sound even better.
The next paycheck we get can mean much more than keeping the lights on.
The next song we hear can inspire us to write more of our own.
The next song we write can sound the best.
The next book we read can make us laugh until we cough.
The next love we live can be our happiest.
The next person we meet we may say Good Morning to every day for the rest of time.
The next anything can be the best everything we ever wanted.