Category Archives: toxic

DEAD ISLAND

Oh something sank
in the history channel

something sank
having run aground

for our part
we floated nonchalantly
around that dead island
all those high tales, great fables,
dead as the stone
of a cenotaph to me

Oh spectral place
and yet
the juries are still out
it is conceivably not death
but a morbid moribundity
that plagues this place
fed its viral rage
a flag burned
not the whole fabric but
just a few cigarette holes skewered
right through it

as apocalypses go
it is like a half-wit
smothered, a
candle snuffed
the air
heavy with phosphates, nothing yet
so sulphurous
stared down to find the bottom of the tide

but there
not a live fish swam;

nothing
swims in this.