Shark Belly

I had a hallucination while I was sick with the flu and a fever in a Mosul combat outpost. And the hallucination was me tied to the chest of a whale, diving deep and watching every ancient sea creature, shark, and whale come up from the depths to "Even the Score". I also woke up and watch a commercial featuring a flash of the A-bomb hitting Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And I also was being rained on. And with the fever, ever cold drop of rain felt like a sledgehammer smashing into me. This is the ensuing verbal assault. It should only make sense to people who know what kind of "Home" I'm talking about.



Let me tell you something about home.

Did you know that the flash from the atomic bomb
turned the sand in Hiroshima
into glass?

Thats how your lover wants you to be converted
From the cult
of "Im coming back"
to the religion of
"I am here"

In a flash!

So.
Dont become an avalanche of goodbyes.
Just. Explode!
Like a 3 Mile Island beach house.
Live together in radiated love.
Glow green at night.
Grow three arms and an extra nose.
Concieve Godzilla
So when he leaves one year.
Everybody he meets
Will sigh and say
"His parents must have been skyscrapers"
And they'll be right.

Listen Kid
That bomb took 45 seconds to fall.
Maybe that helps you realize the importance of 45 seconds.
Because even if that bomb fell for 45 years
It wouldnt be enough.

You can invent magic calendars
that read backwards
So that whenever you leave
You're actually going back to her
To fall in love
Over and over
Until your kisses skip like
An overplayed record
And your hearts explode
Like pens on an airplane

You can invent x-ray machines
That show the colors you didnt know existed.
And use them to camouflage the machine gun nests
in your mouth

But in one millionth of a second.
Modern American Science
Can birth a second sun just long enough
to prove that popcorn never lasts past the previews.
Lovers clothes never come off fast enough.
Kites will never take you to the moon.
And doctors will always say its Cancer.

Home can be alot of things.

It can be her body shaking like California
in earthquake season.
Turning your head into a thunder cloud
singing electric hallelujah praises

Sometimes its
Tired arms are the Atlantic swells
grabbing at the sides
of every ship thats leaving your harbor

Its a sleepy fuse
that leads to your head
waiting to be lit and
destroy your nightmares
with the noisy bar-room lullaby
of a thousand sad soldiers
drinking to forget

Its the gypsy kid spirit
That glows electric
in all train-station lanterns

And the tunnel a dozen kids
Dug from Santa Monica Pier
To China,
But never filled up.

Its one of the millions of
miracles of light.
that died over Roswell
in the 50's

Sometimes the weary walls of
a Hospital Corridor are Home.

And its buckling under too much bad news

For some people Home is a coal mine
in Pennsylvania
that will swallow them as it swallowed
every other honest working man
for 6 generations.

Home can fit in places air cannot.

There are no canaries in that house.
But the Descent Cages hold a dozen men.
and release them like doves
into the tunnels

So they can get used to being lowered into the ground.

But more importantly,
to make them feel like birds.

Kids want to feel like birds.
I want to feel like a bird.

You want to feel like a bird.

For some people
Home is an old Victorian house
built outside the city.
And when Katrina rolled in
the exodus started,
and all the windows and doors
were boarded up
and painted with
"We're coming back"

And they've been renting the 7 O'clock news ever since.
Paying for it, with the cash of their ears
Hearing every day
"You cannot go back"

Home is the reason we invent time machines.
Its the burts of red and green
All over the room on Christmas Eve
And the look on your face
that says "Im going to attack you. Fiercley"

For sharks its the ocean.
Every damn drop of it.
You can breathe in it
As much as you can drown in it.
Believe me!
Because since Hiroshima
I have been a shark
thats mouth has been gaping
its whole life
so that maybe
someday
in all my desperate yawning

I can say
that the WHOLE ocean
has passed through my gills

Because if you can never be the ocean.
Well then,
You can never be anything....

I know you've been chumming the water
with the meat and blood
of your own arms and legs
You'll sleep in my belly when I come back.

Listen Kid.
The reason I look so familiar is because
I had been everywhere before Hiroshima.
Where I forgot my tinted goggles.
And couldnt look away

If everybody could have seen what I saw
There would be no such thing as war.
Or Atomic fission.
And the Enola Gay would remain a Holy name

And when houses creaked at night
It was just them doing their best to say
"Thankyou for sleeping in me, just one more night."

I found your thighs and shoulders
In a cloud of red
In the Kuroshio

Converted and Baptized
Amen