the color of water

[amuse]

down drains it flows like
wine:
arterial blood,
while across the street
they sing
"l'chaim! to life! to life!"

millions of dollars
nest in feathers
choking swans
choking eagles
as shipping magnates
say "oh, this time
we will restore our ships"

and blue ice falls
like tears
blue tears fall like
icebergs
can't scale
this abyss
can't tell
the damage
secrets in lakes
let's water the fields

they seem clean
but sally died of
cancer before she
was three her pee
was yellow
looked just fine
but the pathologist
knew better

knew when carcinogens
first ran out to play
when statues in rome
first started to die
well acid rain comes
to all of us, even the
living doesn't it
(sometimes i forget
that i'm alive)

and isn’t it odd
how mama earth
took a break
just burbled stretched
wriggled a bit
forgot about us
like we were dust
on her skin

maybe she said something
but we couldn’t hear
we aren’t dolphins
or elephants or
fish
"now you have to breathe
water" she said
damn that was a big
*** burp, mama

did you forget we don’t have gills?

sometimes I
even forget
I’ve died
like now
with blue skies
and no snow this winter

something like spring
in january
will it ever ice up again?
will it ever rain again?
will we ever cry
once more?
out of nowhere
from the heart

flowing like flash floods
tsunamis
high mountain streams
that destroy us and heal
like pure colors of water.