Whale Song (this is long and loose and I'll work on it later)

Who's to say I can't let
the hippopotamus that follows me
daily swallow me whole,
who's going to challenge my want
of a spinster to hold hands with
chat with over cold tea?
If it's the prerogative of poetry
to save a life why not cry into the night
and grab someone's attention
enough for them to put a gun
to the uttered words and scream, I dare you.
That windowshade wouldn't
even shudder in the wind if it weren't
for the violence of the breeze whispering
cruelties into its ear.

I feel the need to exonerate light
to then diminish its importance
and, like deer in a wintery suburb,
flock toward it again and again...
It's like an untethered shadow, the confused
child running circles in the mall, lost.
I've been beached too long.
Someone rubs me gently with sponges
but it won't keep. I tangle
with squid and yet have not looked
the grizzly's fangs of asphalt and violence in the eye
boldly enough to say I love you, will you
please reach out to my hand.
If it is poetry's prerogative to save
and make differences, where is
the whale song reaching toward--
what community will the water droplets
reach once that gargantuan tail splashes.
Two clicks, a long mournful whine
deep within the ocean and the loam.