Trying To Survive The Flood

The trail to your own body leads you nowhere,
so you start again with a dictionary, a salt shaker
and a mouthful of seeds. You’ll get that bird
if it takes a lifetime of false starts.
If it takes a lifetime of false starts
eventually the phosphorescent cave will dim,
spit its tubercular message-in-a-bottle
headfirst into the neon boat docked
somewhere south of Volcano Ridge, twenty minutes
by python from Gypsy Creek, as the vulture flies.
“Kiss me, I’m Dying,” it will read,
a triple-your-love-back, good for all seasons,
fine print guarantee scrawled in invisible red ink
missing from the bottom of the page.
Pretty tricky, you think, slipping on your detective’s
cap and coat and breaking your ankle.
If only I could bail sewage from my bloodstream,
connect the dots of my low watt neurons
till they came out right, this black-light sleep
might get me somewhere. But somewhere isn’t
in the cards for you dear, and the radio has
already reclaimed your thought, sent it packing
with the latest recipe for dangerous
elegies over the air-waves, back from whence it came.