Leaking

The oil leak still stains the mud.

I dig the dirt and put it to one side,

building a pile to be quietly proud of.

The worms find a freedom, the

exact opposite

of what they really wanted.

I wash my hands off, a swirling

muck in the sink, the drains kick hard with

their usual stink.

The picket fence is slowly rotting,

the moisture bloats the plaster-work,

the music from the club

vibrates these dusty

bricks in their place. There is

no permanence.

The skin flakes from wringing hands

sit atop my every meal,

the drills in the ground

release the gases I breathe in,

unknowing.

Eyes leak, weep infectious liquids.

That same familiar taste. I can almost hear my brain rotting,

the pavement I painstakingly

paved cracked and

gave way to

a new ditch,

in which weeds grow and cover the ground

soon covered with lead-lining and concrete

to conceal the bodies they created,

to hide the spirits which they stole.

The mania a side effect of living now,

reasonable responses, well considered and thought

out, the pains that they brought out,

and for what? Their chair

is just a little more comfortable.

A thousand nights of rage,

the droning sounds,

the acid rain.

The rats with the right idea.

All contributions taking from another,

distant but equally deserving. A pit

we writhe in, only adding to

our karmic misfortunes,

my beliefs like a poison, my

principles a prison of

thoughts, my family held in place by

the paper in my pocket, the plastic

I produced, or the times

I failed to do so. Their wide

eyes silently begging to be freed from

the cycle I perpetuate, a uselessness, a

failure, a poor protector, a

worn soul, self-tortured,

the bottom of the pyramid.

The black land

I created

will swallow me whole someday. The oil will seep

into my restless body,

a painful erosion, rotting

’til there’s nothing left. Bones in a slick puddle

for eternity, dug up and studied

a few millennia from now.