No Man is Island, so Men say--
I am not a Man:
Rock drowned in saltest Dreams
of Animals who Name.

I was not born Human. I was born Shaman.
Creatures and worlds you call dreams
Swim, sweet, around me.
Your mainland's below my Horizon.

Faint seismic echoes of my Kin
I hear in Deeps.
Knit in the Mantle, we're
Fur on Earth's back--

God's a small nosy animal.
And you and I simply are...
the tips of God's luxuriant fur.
So my link to you is deep,
but I'm a whisker-end,
far from the comfy pelt.
Whiskers get lonely,
and bruised from hitting things first.

Feelers rarely meet.
I hear their songs, I read their tales
I wish they weren't dead, or
Caged in fame.

My life, like crystal Vines
Crawls on winter Glass
Too wounded by a Breath
For Love or Human Race

Free to bloom I am--
On my given Ice Stem.

My frostflowers beckon
like this one
but touch me and I melt, I run,
thaw me and I'm gone.

Third eyed, hollow drumheart
I lope your streets
Flinch in market, stunned to speak--
Mute press coin and flee--

Life as a fear-bag. Fear-bag.
They give Prozac for it, to the pros,
but this ain't prose, and they
ain't got no Poetzac
to calm this poet.
And I suppose I show it.

Changeling, can I ever love?
How does Isle rejoin?
Fear the only way's the Trench
So Subduction croons--

My analogy's geology:
my only fix is
tectonics.
If an ocean trench recycles me,
there'll be no one to cry for me--
Alone till I die and reincarnate,
I'll never find my changeling mate!
This life is wasted...
Hey, I could be wrong!

Can't I build myself a ship?
Could YOU sail Stone?
Till Palm and Teak nod over me
I Rock, alone--

Easter Islanders cut all their trees,
then couldn't build boats to sail away from their
island bare. They ate each other.
On my rock, to avoid their cannibal fate...
I plant the seeds floating in on the Great
Sea: of Dreams. Water with tears and wait.
Lush isles take time to grow. Time and tears to grow.

Ask not for whom the Tall Boles:
They grow for me.

Never mind John Donne--
"Ask not for whom the bell tolls"
Never mind Ernest Hemingway's
Islands in the Stream
Never mind Paul Bowles,
that whisker-end who fled the face

The tall boles, the bell tolls, the Paul Bowles--No!
This is not some shaggy-dog poem
Building up to one dumb pun:
That pun was a late, fortuitous Pounce,
Distracting all you Gullibles
from a crazy castaway's dream.

No albatross around my neck,
I do not pester dinner-guests,
I am no Ancient Mariner,
But a simple beast who lost his fur,
And rears before you here.
Humanity, be glad you are!
It's easier by far.

And you--the few--like me, outcastaways.
Pick your dreamfruit every morn,
And learn to navigate NOW.
So when you do carve your life-canoe,
You'll voyage, not blunder.

But sail before your isle erodes,
And the green
Waves
Wash
You
Under.

And now for a completely unrelated poem!

NO MAN 'SLAND

No man is Island, so Men claim.
Then why that Skull wash round your Brain?