Poem: Galveston Oil Spill

Galveston Oil Spill

Then out of the metal drums the whale-huge hulls poured the blood of
nations’ wealth. the riches in black deeds, black dug
from the compression of the ages where the dinosaurs had died by some
disaster:
orbs plumetting large as buildings to the seas, blackening the skies,
reaming the tropical lush flight of leaves they ate, killing off the light.

Their bones dissolved and graved…the tarsiers came out of
their protective holes…a light like owls in their eyes, eyeing
nervously the pterodactyled skies, watching for teeth; used their
intelligences to conceal themselves.

Eventually roaming the savannahs where the dried dust garners a
hard heart and dominance takes possession of the food for brides,
our furry sweethearts carried their spears torched for the
electric lamps wired to their veins’ desires…

what, what?/where the seabirds scream, below in the wanton “mess”
of the tinny coppered tarnished waves, where the
“humpbacked tons” of “long-legged bait” // swayed up and tipped
their spouts
mammoths flying in a sky of waters
dimensions distances of planets bequiled by their squeaks
flipping under the hooked moons, baited indeed by scores of krill.

Shrill the seamews curl their mewsings up, ecstatic birds cross the
waves,
willing their feet down, down into time (patterned with dark and
light) (across the backs of sunken forests sharp)
up again/ pattering across the wet roads: nothing for them — for
us…to swim or drown.

They arise
but soaked
saturated by our deeds. Feathers shrunk, small bodies black dwarves
chilled…

We dug the tummy of the endless earth (or so we thought) we burned
out arum puckering our throats, spewed like the spume the spouts of
whales from the towers. metal set the ladders to the skies erected.
Oh, the deep lull of metal…blows of filfth..
ships scending our bladdered silken iridsecence thick as
the dying blood, a gleet over the rich quickness of the drilled
seas..
the hellish beacons “glered” against a wet night
and men were murdered, men who died in mud;
governments went up inside the power built by this, plots in the
unlit lairs
while enemies in armies held their guns in Kleigbold glares

This oil and its endless riding wicks. Unhulled.

Yet now when the whaled keels dispose of blackness, new Black
Deaths. When nothing is left that will regenerate, but every shred
of dread, of dead skin fingernails cold as moons is fought for to
begin
our day/ with what we need/ and what we want/ DRIVING US
in shards, wheeled upended, borrowing motion from the soft
lithe upward birds (still downward held, jealous of gravity of
simple curves…our clumsy motorings) (unmoored)
When every plastic piece of fruit will cost the wages of a day and
family life is tied to a flourescing tube
a praise for a disabled language, and black ooze clings to the
“sheeted dead”
floating in a cinematic light…
When
the seabirds cling to the black glutinous slicks
losing their heat, flying towards neither light nor heat, unable
even
to lose themselves
in waters…shivering, netherward, flapless….
WHAT their revenge/ climbing endlessly for relief. No egg
Nor brood nor mate nor flight released again, quicksand of a
liquidity…webbed feet stuck like an insect in a spider’s web
wrapped in a threaded cradle
nested for the dead.

What at the end, when congregated in a corner of their home a
room of seas/ an element they feel (unlike air) as we
above, like a dense heavy coming, thick with second skin
motionless within
swimming mountain or city high or country long, flying
in it
(We walk in a straight line) yet bird and whale, circle, cover
time with space, and dive
a different spiral of a place in which to ideate

Crescents arcing, bounding, releasing comfortable
thought, instruction
to their friendly pups.
The whales’ singing blends a moaning chorus sickened, dying at
the tongues (their clear home covered with a seal) surface
Unbreathing Stopped.

The universal whimper of distress calls forth
from even giants, from predators
instinctive love.

And the men who look to seas will no spirits rise nor call a spout
of whales to tip up, and flippers large as forests spilling up
no more will slap and turn and sound their tailings (deep down as the
center of earth on land
where dinosaurs dug up are burned)

As large, we whales, since the dinosaurs, no thing
who make the seas seem small.
Small sea, large ships and buildings build; extinct
the armatures
of anciency, linked, awash

Quiet the blackness of your deeds, pulled rom the tarry
barren realms of hell;
“Peaceful” the soundless, birdless waves
of fishless seas, unschooled.
And we?
And who avenges fish?

Where will we (humans) crawl (stroke) swim when piece of wave
which lifted once in waltzes furious as
solar systems coming into cosmos
are slickered o’er with glut?
Where will we walk, into what
mystery
where space and time wait dimly dark as mildewed woodland ground?

Quiet the blackness of our deeds, pulled from the black and barren
realms of hell.
Peaceful the soundless birdless waves
the fishless seas, unschooled.
And we?
Thee saved the whales to slay the seas.

When the sound of the derricks pounds and the dim drumming empty
hulls hollow will hoot as they go down, the clanging hear where once
the gulls had whined and whinnied once/
and we, the crafters of this ship
are standing on the bridge in visionless fog.
The dark is deep and black and viscous
as our endless powering drive
our endless needs, desires
Pride, which anchors us/ unto thse/ ancient bones
compressed…
(Dried as the corpses of dead fish
hung up and tried out for their grease)
On platforms of our metallic deeds /// on surfaces.

(Feet glued to
these oozing tarry barren realms of hell
dead stars upon this span of earthly oil.)