Here's something else, It's called "The Plunge"
This next poem, and I'm trying to imitate in the poem
the feeling of plunging into the water.
Actually I'm a lousy diver with me, it would just be a jump.
I'm plunging into the water and then swimming underwater
as long as your breath can hold out before you finally
come up again.
And I'm trying to get the almost muscular feeling of doing this
and the feeling of your breath going on,
but also I want this to imply any action which
you commit yourself which lasts some time and the commitment.
Well frankly, I'm speaking about certain kinds of drug trip
in this among other things, and you just
know you've got to hold on until you come out of it.
But all that is needed for the poem--
I'm symbols can be boring, can't they?
Let's keep to the literal.
All that one needs to know is the idea
of plunging into the water and swimming underwater.
"The Plunge."
A pure bold plunge into--
down a rope of bubbles, trapped where you chose to come,
it is all there is.
The brute thrust of entering this all
alien like a bitter sheath, each nerve, each
atom of skin tightens against it to a gliding and moving with,
its flesh could become water it, and lust
flying a blurred sunken sky where you carry your own pail
home with you.
At rest in your own prolonged ache and the testing forward,
how much more can the body take?
How much dare?
It is all there is, till the body knows now it's time.
Let's go holding almost till too late gives itself
to the slow rejection, you go limp on it, a gentle lift,
you wait on it, wait you, eat the air.