Toxic Waste
I'm floating dirty bombed in a mermaid sea
flotsam'd with promises broken unspoken, ducking
the twin-eyed turrets swiveling sweetly
siamesed from the face of the Ace of Storms.
My brain beneath its sponge infection
recalls the first inflection of those liquid fingers
so lyric on shifting skins; impossible to know
they'd stiffen on the chain of gold, pull, snap the thin
links, all destroyed but the red line left cutting my throat;
yet I sing on in a song that cannot stop.
So many clouds on the cards,
bleeding so close, spitting their pretense
of earth-splitting power, then racked by
the trump of the sun, useless to shorten
my half-life or untie a single atom; even you
the last worst hurricane of a terrible season,
only swamp with your dissipating ebb
leftovers of fission pooled on the reactor floor
in a lake of toxic effluent as
dangerous to use as it is to jettison.
Don't think you can dump it
in those pitiful hollow drums,
sink the poison weight forever beneath
the dark of that Mariana trench which is
your everliving night. It is not there where
no light comes, but in the air beside you,
the black water beneath you,
the black water beneath you,
released by rust, glowing with death
come to finish what you started
when the soft sickness began.
June 2012
Posted for OpenLinkNight at dVerse Poets Pub
I'm hosting tonight at the pub and hope you'll come join us. The doors opened at 3:00 PM EST and will stay wide, barring a thunderstorm, till Wednesday midnight.
I'm hosting tonight at the pub and hope you'll come join us. The doors opened at 3:00 PM EST and will stay wide, barring a thunderstorm, till Wednesday midnight.
If you'd like to hear the poem read by the author, click below:
Header Image: US Nuclear Waste Stored Uncapped Underwater, by Blatant World.com on flick'r
Footer image: 11.055SkullValley 019, by Rylan S L, on flick'r
