Milligan(The Ocean)

Leggo eye upon the region, lift your eye above the sun, raise your mind above temptation, leggo eye upon the dawn

Leggo eye upon the region, lift your eye above the sun, raise your mind above temptation, leggo eye upon the dawn

Milligan Benji, five foot nine and bone, standing on a hill overlooking the luminous city, barebacked with a Gilpin cutlass between elbows, sweat oozing from his solar capital like government juice

He was my age then and wore beige bell-bottoms over ten-eye high suede desert boots, overstepping streets and tree-lined boulevards in search of the carnival

But there are no masquerades on the avenues, no brass bands, no bamboo knocking, no wrist, no rubber, no steel, no color, the city seems ghostly bare

So he asks the dust

"Where is the Carnival?"

And the dust replies"Many things begin and end in the sea"

That was the day a black rain fell bucket a drop and rivers rose over mountains

The storm sent shacks tumbling, the sky dim lit like a dream

Many skulls were bust just by the weight of raindrops

Milligan ran to the high cliffs on the coast and found that many had already flown east from there

They left burning heaps of bed linen, dried fish and chamber pots of mud and maniac bitumen, and the bones of those the spirits refused flight

Milligan saw the water coming over the hill, flinging wood and beast like sorrow self

And seeing this broke him bare

The suffer the love, the suffer the love bore thick tears in his eyes

But you see my Milligan, he was a black heart man, never fearful

He unlaced his boots, he removed his sterling silvers

Then he bent his head in meditation at that steep brim between the gulf and the sea swept hills

He had saved many lungs of breath by then, in a sack hid under his armpit

And so, he just up and leapt into the sea below

Movement that goes, movement that flows

Movement that flows, as your life goes

Would you ever save me?

When he really starts to swim so, he swim with slink and mountain chicken, Milligan swim with Zangie eel and pusherman fleeing the island

He strong alone on the swirling tides

And early on the fifth day he met a merman

And he asked the merman, he say,"Mister man, where my ïerè?"

And the merman replied,"Ïerè dissolved in the flood like sugar in saliva, only fragments remain"

"And Africa?" Milligan asked

And to this the merman calmly replied,"Many died"

Milligan swam with the merman to the outskirts of an undersea kingdom

He had heard about this place from the Baptist mythic, he had heard the pearl fishers' rum talk

But its dimensions had long been underestimated by even eminent cartographers

Milligan saw the black coral caves, he saw the intricate emblems stitched in bone

He saw humming fish dart between his awe and personal temple

And on the outskirts, he could see the volcano plantation, spewing magma and pumice flame from the seabed

And he saw that when the molten stone dried, crests and valleys were formed and within these were crystalline segue ways and subaquatic chambers where his people lived

Milligan asked the merman, and the merman said,"Many things begin and end with the sea - indeed - the earth is hollow, not solid as was thought"

And such as these were the words that kept Milligan in Olukun’s kingdom, till soon he would not notice water

And we never saw him again