the process of dying on the backs of our mothers

we alone attempt to think
our way out of morality--
there has to be an escape-- 
another ending that other
creatures haven't thought yet--
they don't think enough--
you know? they waste their
bodies
on motion--
drink sun light with
fat pink tongues-- what
a waste it is to have a jaw
calcium carbonate in your bones--
our escape from death
will only take planning--
the calculation of the cycles
of the moon who splashes her
face clean in the bays 
of her bathroom sink-- 
we have made these bodies
without
all the fixtures that remind us
of dying-- 
we gave up our finger nails in
the hopes of never coming to wrinkle--
traded blood
for the undulation of the waves--
salt water and breathing
in sand and bone-- 
these bodies made a body--
groom our hair with the cartilage
carcass of another shark--
we think sharks are
the funniest of all the animals
who neglect to listen to us--
thrash their way through more
and more blood 
only to die as suddenly 
as their jaws delve into
another body-- it is easy to consume
and die that same--
there is no one but the parrot
fish who dares to consume
the coral-- push water
vein-- ripe tide us
all into eternity-- 
feel the ocean encompassing--
at night we hear the whispers
of all the dead--
only the coral learned how
to speak to ghosts--
we try to tell them it's time
to rest but their bodies turn
white and they swim
deep 
deep
and we can't sleep still possessed 
with memory of the teeth
of an angler fish--
we hope to die in the day light--
the dark of an ocean is too 
wide to hold another death--
mistake us for a flower 
so death might forget what
he was supposed to do with
all these bodies--
our
many many bodies-- 
each branching-- these 
thick and gnarled vein--
re-grow these skeletons
on the bones of fathers--
oh to eat is to remember is to
only forget again--
the coral-- she write down the
memories of the ocean 
and talk their ghosts into 
submission--
it is only the coral who
would ever know how to
talk through the silence
of a whale corpse as she's 
devoured by the mouths
of the hag-fish--
oh! and there's still so much
time to think--
so many ways to think--
my mother thought sometimes
briefly about air--
i think of it too
and then i remember the face
of my father as i grew
from his rib cage--
and i listen again
to the flux of my blood.