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