Who knows what admirable virtue of fishes

below the low-water mark,

bearing up against a hard destiny,

not admired by that fellow creature who alone

can appreciate it!

~Henry David Thoreau

 

10:33 PM

 

Swaddled in kelp

with a spider crab crown,

the drowned surgesways

his way across the ocean floor

mumbling briny lies of dryness

with a long-decayed

tongue and a mind

soaked in salty denial.

 

While about, about the air

around his head

dancing death-fires

reel and rout

like witch oils

red and blue and white

and red and blue.

 

His bones are folded

inside the wreck,

neatly placed into the crêche

by currents, crabs, decay.

 

Where once a heart

a black eel slips

inside a fishcage arch of ribs

while through the holes

inside his head

a tideborne prayer softly floats

You have the right, it says,

to remain…

 

11:15 PM

 

Silent.

Noodling trout

from a deep, black hollow.

Fingers wiggle in the void

like a host of drowning worms.

But the memories don’t bite,

they hide half-buried in the mud.

Beneath the rotting branches

of a submerged tree,

they lie amid the murk

and eye my fingers warily.

 

12:38 AM

 

Waking I find

 

The Sacramento County detox tank

is cold concrete without sharp edges,

blank and formless

like a drained pool.

Our drunken crew sprawled

upon its bottom like wrack;

sunken, cracked and bloated, looking dead,

slowly drowning. We ooze urine, sweat,

blood and drool. Fluids pool,

they chill quickly on the concrete

and we shiver in the underground air.

Gases seep from the seats of our pants,

from the corners of our mouths

from our wide, wet nostrils.

 

And as on ancient maps,

a sinister marginalium is perched,

patrolling the edge

with his lunatic eyes.

Here there be dragons, they say.

 

On his stainless steel throne,

he is our mad captain Ahab.

Scepter in hand,

he mumbles and moans

watching his men squirm on the deck

of our drunken boat.

 

His tattooed bicep reads K-Dog.

It expands and contracts

while he jacks off

like a marquee sign

flashing “Crazy, Crazy, Crazy.”

 

K-Dog is in a very distant place.

Only his pump remains in this world

like a shipboard air compressor providing air

for his submerged, aquanaut mind

as it descends to bathyspheric depths

and explores the ocean floor.

 

And in K-Dog’s eyes is the thing

in all the drunks’ fever dreams

that make us alternately scream

and grind our teeth to dust.

 

It is leviathan.

That which keeps us on our knees.

Vertigo of the deep.

The very thing that makes me drink

is what I drink. My vessel leaks.

I sail my ship beneath the sea.

 

I have no spine for mutiny.

 

1:05 AM

 

We hold our breaths

like drowning men.

 

Wrestle to see

who will be first to leap

over the side of our sunken ship.

Eyes sealed shut

or wide and fish-like.

Deep sea punches,

slow and blind.

Brains like high divers

wearing weight belts,

plunging leadenly

into unconsciousness,

periodically struggling

back to the surface,

treading water,

lips peeled back

above the water’s film,

eyes like mucus-filled periscopes.

 

The room creaks and sways,

I have the seasickness bad.

All of these drunken men

crash like waves into each other.

And me?

How have I come

to be in irons

upon such a sea of

filth and sick and madness?

But here I am.

I have no stars to navigate by.

 

1:20 AM

 

The aquarium door

of steel and bulletproof glass opens

and sweet-faced, sloe-eyed

coffee-skinned boy

is flushed in.

 

Clutching his laceless shoes

to his hollow chest,

he looks far too young

to be at sea.

 

He enters gingerly,

nearly rolls his ankle on a hamhock thigh,

takes a punch to the crotch for his trouble.

Looking for floor to stand on,

he performs a peg-leg dance,

strangely graceful,

like a hobbled crane.

He is kicked around

the growling sea

like a little paper boat

before finally washing ashore

at K-Dog’s feet.

 

 

Eyes closed,

knees clutched to his chest,

the boy inches slow down the wall

like a bead of sweat.

Furiously trying to forget where he is.

Behind their lids,

his eyes grind about

in sockets like unoiled bearings.

 

The tears squirt

from eyes clenched like fists.

 

He is thinking of his mama.

 

I would like to help the boy,

but I am sunk same as he

and a coward.

 

1:36 AM

 

The boy is weeping.

K-Dog is whispering

something in his ear.

 

But I see nothing, I hear nothing.

I am an island.

Do not swim towards my shores.

 

2:15 AM

 

Deep into the awful sea

sinks our strongbox

Sacramento County Detox.

I am in danger of drowning

among these ruined men,

souls like abalone shell ashtrays,

beautiful things terribly abused.

They will have to start stacking us soon.

Ass to face and face to crotch.

Throwing punches, backing off.

No human words are spoken here,

only gull cries and sea hag shrieks,

the sick sound of wet slaps and weeping.

Roll away and feign sleep, I keep

my tongue behind my teeth.

 

2:55 AM

 

As the compartments flood,

salt water shorts out

our brains. Muscles

twitch as if stung.

Lungs labor

like choking pumps.

 

We are men with nerves

scraped open to expose the raw

color-coded wiring beneath:

red for rage, green for need,

black for self-loathing,

and blue for our fathomless

sadness.

 

Lost at sea

the thought of you

makes me want to cut the blue.

To stop feeling

which is how I found

myself at sea in the first place.

A vicious cycle of tides,

a waste, the brine runs down my cheeks.

I hide my face inside my shoes

and force myself at sleep.

 

3:07 AM

 

In the horse latitudes,

a false quiet.

 

K-Dog has taken the boy in his arms,

he strokes his head and tells us all

of the Great White Whale.

 

Right now, he whispers,

we sitting in its belly

like Jonahs.

3:30 AM

 

Someone takes possession of my feet.

Caressing them.

Talking to them lovingly.

When his tongue finds my toes,

I kick hard at his face

and he recoils, cursing and hurt.

 

He addresses my feet directly

asks, “Why you gotta be that way, baby?”

smoothly takes possession again.

Intent on making it work

between them.

 

3:39 AM

K-Dog screeches.

 

He is on his feet kicking

the sloe-eyed boy’s head in.

 

The waterbreak has broken,

the waves have torn him open

and he is spilling out onto the deck.

 

When whipped,

men lash out

blind like jellyfish.

 

4:25 AM

 

K-Dog is perched

up on the toilet

like a parrot,

his back to us.

Unconscious, the boy is

keel-hauled against the wall.

Like a rose, blood blooms

behind his ear, lends him

a melancholy beauty

while he sleeps.

 

5:00 AM

 

The dead drunk huddle

in their fever dreams,

grapple with shadowy arms,

call out the names

of receding women,

recoil in disgust

from the unsubtle metaphor

their minds serve as warnings.

 

Dreams that hurt,

dreams that smell

like seaweed rotting on the beach.

 

7:05 AM

 

Without warning,

the cops board,

swing in on ropes

like buccaneers,

descend on K-Dog

with billy clubs

and Taser guns.

Kick our Captain

in the teeth

revert him instantly

from Kraken beast

to sick and frightened man.

When they drag him bleeding

on his knees

across the floor and

out the tank,

it’s clear to every soul aboard

K-Dog will not see the shore again.

 

9:35 AM

 

One by one we

walk the plank,

out the door

and off the boat,

carried by the violent tides

of steel and light

and Plexiglass.

 

We’re handed notice

swim or sink,

some are blue and some are pink.

The blues drift deeper

into the beast, the pinks

are washed out to the street.

 

3:15 PM

 

I tie my laces.

I dump my wallet,

my lighter, my keys,

out of the plastic bag.

Reinsert them

in my pockets.

 

3:20 PM

 

The boy emerges

from County

on shaky legs.

Clutching his

pink slip in a fist

he descends

the concrete

gangplank

towards me.

 

In a voice

soft and whipped

as white froth licked

by wind on the sea,

asks me for a cigarette.

 

The sun is harsh

and deafening.

Its light pitches

sickeningly around

us as he waits for me

to say something.

 

Off our bow

there is deep water,