I Made This With A Good Old Friend

Read some of my poems, scored by pianist Lucola Bang

What a Sound the Sea Makes

It sounded like tearing sheet metal when the wave broke
Another offcut ribboned from an aluminium sea and left on the sand

Behind us, the blue cloud was banking and bruised
Hiding the Kilamangiro that couldn’t be there
Finding a short stick we mapped a rough outline of the bay
Using our memories as sounding weights
We zoomed in on the long, eroding beaches down the coast
Where we jumped from rocks in between swells, falling faster than spit

As the rain began to wet the top of our shoes, we washed the orange juice from our fingers
And chose the steepest path back up the hill to the house, to the pot of hot coffee

At the escarpment’s top, a shove of wind—the kind that had felled bigger trees than us

The proof at our feet, a splintered trunk laying heavy in the pine needles
A stone-like Ozymandias, now fuel, all transitioning power
What a sound chagrin makes

Blood Is All I Can Think About

Old blood that was in me soaks a hand towel on the bathroom floor
New blood is being made, though it’s blue and too much of it is in one place
That same blood that’s within me races in her presence
A rapid tattoo loud in my ears
This blood went cold when he called
Pumping slow and thick through his heart instead
My family blood that is me will soon be in another
Maybe it will have superpowers