The following can also be found in the book Jasonettes. Click here to learn more, and to download a free electronic copy; or click here for the rules to writing a Jasonette.

Sharks swim soundlessly
here in our dark waters
each ready to bite in and
hold on for dear needed life, not realizing that
every shiny tooth gouged into our flesh forces
love to bleed away

‘Die?' You laughed when I suggested it cautiously, warningly.
Mere promises of retribution
yearn to be
handholds to a saner life
Attacks never to be perpetrated again
nor to your children, nor to your very soul
Death is something for television movies, you said
While all the while
harm was coming your way on a daily basis
I saw the bruises
loaded with makeup
Empty look in your eyes
I remembered your buttery skin but
never could convince you of the threat before you
testing your sense of decency, your very humanity

He intimately knows your
every curve with the force of his flying fists
He intimately knows that
all the screams
you utter from the dark
bastions of a faraway land
utterly do no good when home's so far away

Tests the sharks give us can teach us
or kill us and
Hell, I wish I'd done more before you placed
tiny toes in their
honorable but dangerous
eastbound direction that you did

Perhaps it will all work out
Rosey family Christmases around foreign fireplaces in December, but
I'm worried the next time we kiss, a
casket will be home
Earth soon to be shoveled to keep you warm
I'm worried about touching
warm sexy skin
at a military hospital bedside

Sharks swim menacingly in our waters
They don't reveal themselves until it's way too late
or way too big to change (we think)
Put down your ticket
and come running to my arms, because I love
you. I love you.

The echoes we refuse to admit

Monday I woke
out of a nightmare where
numb knees lock in impotent silence
I had a silent scream locked in my throat
killed by the sudden revelation that you were
absolutely never coming back

Lips, loose or tight depending on how much liquor
Etched tattoos on me
forever -- even now,
twice a half a decade
since you left, I still feel
hot prickly saliva afterglows from your loose tight lips
even as I forget what you look like

Lunches -- this I remember
Eggs cooked on a street they call High, this
forgotten until I force
to remember the
tiny concrete crawlspace we lost
our virginities together in a splash
Deepening ripples spreading across the surface of our lives
and you refusing to admit the ripples underwater

You still anger me
though hardly at all anymore, only when I remember
hot purple sunglasses forever
egging me on
goading me to commit sins
Ripping of clothes, violation of flesh
and each time, sweat drying on each other, you'd
say, "You should probably go. You can't stay."

See, in the real
world of our perpetual pond, the ripples spread forever
and touch us with
senseless sense of
geography or time or space
Ripples tenderly wash across me today
Each delicate echo bringing memories I've tried to forget
Each memory in reality lurking under the surface
never completely leaving us

And this is what you never understood, what you'll
never understand -- that the
death of sex
teems with the maggots of
hurt longing love anger jealousy melancholy
eagerly awaiting the moment, years later, when the waves
spread when you're least expecting it, crippling you
Killing you so softly

You were in Germany, last I heard, maybe married.
When do you hurt?
Ask what happened?
Swans and shit both float
God laughs at us both daily
Ripples wash across your shore -- maybe now you understand
Early mornings, maybe now you finally understand what
you could never admit