the only thing those boys had

to make the raft

were life jackets

lashed em together,

like those boys were the coaches

and they were the cheerleaders

it was night and they were drunk

the raft blew up and sent them

honking into the current;

those boys are some ducks

you can talk about the sweet river

when you stand knee deep

in a current that would gulp you down

if the water was a little deeper

the world isnt beautiful,

it doesn’t want to kill you

but if it does

it just hoots

and sways in the wind

my head knows a water moccasin

better than my feet do,

nothing wants me dead

i turn the pump on and off

and feel the water coming out,

no water can help me out but

only an idiots and sunken picnic trash

are unhappy, obscurely determined

they twitch while the water passes,

and it is unattractive to watch

my head is above the water,

but my moon is a mute child

whose mom and dad

locked it in a closet

its beautiful when those boys

swim to catch the moon,

blue feet bouncing on the riverbed,

laughing about a thing, they

essentially drown in the process

with life preservers bobbing everywhere

floating like a duck,

the moon bounces like a bug

floating downstream on its back

those boys hang onto

 the clots of trees, spluttering,

drooling indistinctly

i pictured a trailer of stallions

bouncing down a cliff

landing in the bogue chitto,

race horses

who cant think, don’t run

and chew cud at the riverbed

people are beautiful

when you’re beautiful

and those people

will demonstrate the world,

God will be there then,

In clear morning blue

With mild whisps of cloud

I waited for the farmers

To come out into the field

And find me naked in a tent,

if my knife was bigger

it would be a fair fight

there are things I have

that I cant imagine being gone

I send them downriver and

Then I bob like a blinking duck

My ducks are in a plastic bag,

heading towards the gulf

where the salt in the water 

will keep you afloat;

strange, being that the gulf

is mostly four feet deep