Pearl Oyster

Another dent where hope once stuck

Like a redundant ledge for scatter-shot gravel sea-salt

Like a hale roof staring up at god slanted with a wrenching gravity

To try to explain to the self

That perpendicular and parallel have opposite

Fields of orientation for this consciousness

Than the environmental world in which this volition

Appears to operate is akimbo

As if oysters and pearls were not already such slippery currency

And the two had transposed so that the gray-rock shell when opened

Was embedded with a stubborn nut alabaster whiteness impermeable

Occasionally generating a module of softness, a nub of darker gray globule 

To be evaluated and gasped at that something inside the exoskeleton

Was granted a morsel of softness, a congealed liquid squish

Of empathetic understanding, acceptance, and that grand taboo

That interconnects all life that what comprises the majority of innards

In the masses was somehow discovered as a rarity in this body

And what was the anomaly was this being’s normality

Autistic polarity all different minds to make the world

What needs to be, yet this sentence is harsh in this brackish marsh

Drowning in yolk egg-white parched unable to drink the tide

The social nomenclature of how anyone connects ever feels appropriate

That we are really friends, present as if known, seen, or relevant

Beyond the casual game plan of the average Tuesday

Permission to speak express understand assume granted entry

Into conversation or shared experience for the catacombs of function

Operate so deeply the shadows peering have succumbed to the notion

That whatever is nearer to the surface is not the fish’s part of the ocean

A trench dweller geothermal vent the food of sulfur and radiation

Kill the brood, feeds the milky pearl innards like a gasp of air

Alone neck peeking over corners wary of a hand on a shoulder

Like a rape victim and the bedroom door knob inching in rotation

That every resemblance of love was fry-battered in caked abandonment

Torment and recognition of just what waters one is asked to abide

That anything else is suffocation contemplating depression is not sadness

When one has reason to be sad, depression is when one has every reason to be happy

Yet will not keep a gun in the house because the trigger finger feared most sleeps

At the end of one’s limb, and these mathematics of inches and forearm hairs

Stands a bubble of joy rising as if gravity was normalized

For one dear inkling for sphere to appear to ascend from the sandy bottom reef

This sadness has been earned

Smiles about the sadness knowing it is not insane to feel lonely

It is not madness to see fields of cracker-jack box skeletons

Crinkled and absent the questions if one wanted the prize

It is not madness to go at nightfall upon nightfall staring at the moon

Asking god to break the staring contest first

These occurrences that pulverize coincidence

How over and over there is always a reason for the flinch

Knowing it is coming either before or soon after introductions

Like a comical irony of stand-out talent to perform the trick

In a thousand variations all resulting in the same alone

Blearing at the audience like how the fuck did he pull it off again

Not see it coming, palming the coin, picking the pocket

Seeing the queen of hearts always under the other oyster shell

When the Monty is deduced that no matter the alteration in behavior

A man can choose incorrectly with a consistency that would make gambling houses

Midas-like in such gilded perfection

The openness, the vulnerability, the fortitude to craft such artistry

Has sculpted a sadness museum-like collection on display for the ogles

A heart encrusted naked center square invisible

And all the crowd can see is an empire of fabulous clothing