Splotches

My 

legs are 

blotched in 

blue and red:

a comic strip up-close 

or under glass, the characters

becoming clouds of dots, untouching.

We know that the whole is more than the parts 

but the spots that dot my skin threaten to tear me limb 

from limb, blinded by the whims that I let steer me, capsized  

by capriciousness and down down a hole, where even the cleareyed 

can't see for lack of light. I know I am not a ship tossed on the sea. I am the sea.

A sea being swallowed by an ocean; and if you read this you'll understand that it's not
meant to be read but rather heard, to be  shouted out the window of a 14th floor apartment towering
over the slums of a burned out city in Jersey where I never planned to live, never thought I'd 
end up screaming from the roof here, tearing down the things I've built with my own 
selfishness, blinded like a cyclops with one, fat eye. My single-eye and ocean-self 
are knocking down ships. I've never been so big.  I've never  been so small. 
The ocean is the biggest thing we know and we build our cities on its
shores so we can worship and be worshipped by its waves, the 

ever-bowing slaves who swallow  our trash and our bodies 
when we finish with them. The sea is tiny. And the earth

is a pixel, not even round when you zoom past the stars; 
out there everything is made of specks and that is the
truth: dots made of dots made of dots. Look for 
something whole and you'll find holes; boxes 
inside of boxes, each more obscuring 
of what's within. Science is only 
a best guess. We'll never see

inside. Only the comic 
strip dots splotching 

our limbs.