in which iphicles imagines (drowning)

1.

in everything i write
there is a drowning scene

in which the body is
and isn’t water

in which everything is
swallowing

and being swallowed

2.

i want to blame everything
on where we are in history

                              (which is to say:
                               ‘observed or not
                               the boy is always
                               drowning’)

3.

and sometimes there is a return,
sometimes not

sometime a witness,
sometimes not

4.

i dream (and it is like this) –

eyes filling first with blue
and bursting out from in
/ erasing /
/ boundaries /
/ seeing everything /

and then the world is named
( a grief  )  ( a grief  )  ( a grief  )
 
5.

all i want
is to make ‘blue’ a name
for bursting out

as leaving is 
 
6.

i will tell my brother one day:
it was panic first
a churning blue ( inversion )
then something resembling quiet

that the moment before he pulled me
from the water
hauled me up by the hair
i thought “a thing like this is not so bad”

that there should a name
for this colour of water

a grammar for the pressing in

for the “okay then” of outward breath
(such pretty bubbles rising)

7.

and then the sudden rushing in.