7.04.2007

In Their Orbits

Water Street, rocky street. Old and decrepit. Smelling of shit and salt and atheism. But I get to thinking. I am a rock. We are all rocks, orbits already set. We are standing in them, mucking about with our eyes stuck in them like tar, stoned faces melting into the pavement, lights blurring into their metal poles, water running in the rusty grates, dirty shit hole, calloused cunt trap of a crumbling sidewalk. And there he was sitting on the cardboard. I sit beside him, smelling the piss from his clothes.

“Have a drink” he says.
“I can’t. It will wear me down. I can’t.”
“I am God. You will drink from the tree of life and still be empty. I make water come from the stone”
I drink.

Ice And Nothing

Scratching and rolling,
like metal against wood,
white against fiberglass, screeching,
lifting us up like a bird with a broken wing...
Seven days now and not one seal.
The boat is gonna roll
but Bill won’t get out on the pans,
as if he could do something to save her.

In the bunk the sounds are muffled
into a bear cry,
itching from every side, above and below,
scraping the thin sheet of wood and glass
between us and the cold roar-
the sleep façade goes on.

Bill coughs while the boat cracks
and we’re pretending not to notice the way she tips,
the sound of the water rushing in below us,
hiding our eyes and lockin’ on to nothin’
like stunned idiots.

In the dark I crawl to the deck
and stare out at the black and white -
holding us so close you could touch it.
Ice and Nothing.
I touch it when they aren’t looking.