Futility of Dreams From the Bottom of the Sea
the moments between life and death
Not everyone who dies gets the funeral they deserve.
They fished his body out,
White balloon flesh flaked off on
Grappling hooks, not malevolent
Not kind just flinty black
— All utilitarian, you understand —
He was not frozen not clammy,
Nor cold, as though not even conceived
Nor imagined, roundly denied acknowledgment,
Even that of a squashed frog, and so much
Silent rain running with horizontal
Precision into a liquid continuity,
Like Chinese water torture protracted to
A slug’s lifetime of quickening
Death on slow slime roadways, but
Texture nevertheless,
choked on unremarkable
Lives in an enormous court of law.
Hull of a luxury liner was the
Backdrop to a falling body
Stripped in that instant of all morality,
Choices and deities,
