July 8, 2003

There aren’t any maps. There isn’t any consolation.
There are no guided tours tonight around the parapet
or the base of the statue. Over the moat
goes the bridge, but the alligators don’t snap.
Caught within a sappy fairy tale take your nap.
Once upon a time they sold a diamond
to a feudal lord or handmaiden. They trench
the embolism with nothing but a thin wire.
You can see into the hole but you can’t get out of it.
The light at the end of the tunnel doesn’t brush your face.
Once you marched into the void with your fishing pole and flashlight.
Now the sign of a financial prospectus makes you tremble.
Your vampiric predilections dissolve in a vat of fire.
The whip[-shaped clouds of the jet trails have stopped appearing.
An excrescence of the sun resolved itself yesterday in the form
of a pink gelatinous blob that landed on the coast of Chile.
Scientists are attempting to discover the exact nature of the mass.
They do find corpses floating in the Fore,
lone fishermen before the harbor master.
The grey seals leave them alone to drift. That way
they ventured too far out. What was out there,
mackerel, porgies? To do the dead man’s float
requires you relax, relent. Perhaps I was greedy
so I overreached, but what I reached for wasn’t worth it.
There’s too much damage done for an open casket.
The job of a harbor master makes you matter of fact.