photo by N.Klapetzky, edited by the author
there is salt, and there is salt.
what’s the difference,
my father asked me at dinner
the other day, between
sea salt and plain ol’
en-ay-see-el? and i said
sea salt is less strict, dad,
more complicated;
but i don’t know if that’s right;
don’t know its bio-
chemical makeup, how late
it lets its daughters
out at night. chemicals aren’t
all latch-key and angle, you know.
for instance, there are some in the brain
more sensitive to love
than to cocaine. i’ve heard this;
that, chemically, love is the most terrible
addiction. crazy women need brave lovers,
the poet said; this i know also
to be true; i’ve seen crazy.
but i don’t know their chemistry, either:
not love or crazy. my professor
used to wear unmatched socks;
he taught the dissociation of salts.
his eyes were the color of sea glass.
he told my father once i
was the most impressive he’d ever had.
i could have loved him, then,
but i was addicted to my own heart-
beat. that rhythm is less biochemical
than electrical: a crazy drummer in my head
banging out signals to my chest.
i hope he is brave.
too much salt can fuck
it all up, cause heart-
ache. like breathing in sea glass.
how long can you hold your
breath underwater? my cousin
and i used to swim in the lake
by my grandparents’ house,
catch turtles on cane poles
with bits of old bread.
the biggest one we dragged up
onto the shore, and my father
sliced her neck while
her jaws were clamped
onto the back handle of an old broom.
that was before i knew chemistry.
or love. or that guilt could be as addictive
as cocaine. i’m not sure if this
is true, but i have seen crazy.
turtles, the poet said, turtles
all the way down.
the tenth muse 
Joanna, we are all collaborators on Spaceship Earth. I took the salt and the light from the New Testament!
Lovely! I feel plunged directly into your thought-stream when I read this, immersed in all its inner and external connections at once.
thanks, Kyle. plunged in my thought-stream… i don’t know if even i want to be there at times. 🙂 missed you friday night at the gallery.
Hey, me off thread as usual (chuckle). I know WordPress needs more support with these wonderful blogs being free and all. The new ad links on key words doesn’t bother me on my site but here where each word is important I find inappropriate. The WordPress family may agree? they are always helpful in looking for solutions. Maybe it is just me and my phobia of too many links………..
hmm… i guess because i am always logged in here, i don’t see the ad links? going to investigate this further… thanks for bringing it to my attention. 🙂
My fault, I got something in my Chrome browser “Rival Gaming” that was causing this problem. I should have known it wasn’t WordPress. You really can’t let your guard down on these machines. Sorry for comment but it did help me correct my problem.
eh, well, always good to give the site a checkup anyway. glad it got sorted out one way or t’other. 🙂
This is superb. I love both the poem’s ostensibly casual voice and the discursive narrative line that keeps looping back to the poem’s main concerns. Excellent.
thanks so much, Dick. the looping is definitely what makes it work for me. 🙂 appreciate you dropping by.
YOU, my friend, are freaking amazing.
Your words go straight to my core. I honor your honesty. Sending much love.
you make me blush, Shea! happy this found some resonance with you. love back atcha. 🙂