I sailed into the looming cracks
of the Capri mountains, which rise
like great conchs from the topaz ripples.

I sailed in sand-chains and the white coral trails, flowing over-under,
up-down, beating me back into the deep midnight
cutting my neck in a sapphire chain
and diamond accents. I bash

against the redstone columns, arcing over
the Grotto’s roughened walls, forming a hand print
of the palms that the palm boughs fray.
One stem is broken and the other leaves splay

Across the stony ledge, that cuts
A precipice like a hand print.
I am determined to submerge myself
in the red bath without tears.

The Emperor is a hermit-crab scavenging
for the red sun that soaks the stones.
The light echoes against me. Anemones
lash away from the wick of waves, their legs

sticking poison into the flesh of translucent
light. Urchins lock my toes as I sail from their victim feet.
Cornflower, periwinkle, are weeded to the limestone
bottom that stays azure, even as the black stings

The shadow of light below gashes at my bruised
fists, the reflections of a minnow’s gills.
Tiberius’ hands bathe in the fossilized azure.
The blue executes

as it hits the ivory bottom
and the light-shine-lanterns
of mimed stalagmites clear.
I see a gap in the sky of the cave,

bleeding from clouded azure
to black with a ringed moon.
The moonshadow halves me.
My arms stretch and sail

towards the crater and the scratch
of the waves. Will I be the satellite?
Will I wax while the screams wane?
I pinch the wind away . . . .

The cold screams. I claw the plethora
into founts as dark as ink—
will their splashes stain this dome,
when I splash between them?

Mist faces, feet, hands.
I slip on the sword’s edge—
The ice crests file the blade
against my spine, my edge.

Whip, whisper. Blind. Thinning . . .
My veins swish:
brainblue blurring the blue salt
Hand imprinting scarlet

Blood sails into the limestone
Base, like graffiti, “I was
Killed here.” Is any scratch
Left more than invisible lines?