Waterworld

1
As we waited beside the indoor waterfall in our favorite Chinese restaurant, confused seas carried decaying wheat to San Francisco. Also a skeleton subject to spontaneous combustion. Indians and bears woke up not knowing where they were. Each splashed the other beneath a stained-glass sky.

2
I’ll leave when you say. I’ll stay if you think I should. After farmers seeded the clouds, the clouds became barking crocodiles. White petals mixed with red. The TV hazily recalls homicidal machines approaching across a stubble field. Coffee keeps you up. We pass between the black crow and the even blacker shadow it throws.

3
What looked like the wing of a horse had washed ashore. A torch-lit lynch mob passed beneath the hotel windows. I was noodling on the piano. It wasn’t dreaming up names for things that was so difficult, but the crowded waters. My wife shook her head and said, Most definitely. If there were ever records that the cod off the coast of Kamchatka did a dive called the jackknife, they’ve been lost.

4
You tired? Lean against something big, like the birth of the modern navy. A canary doesn’t usually chirp this much. That other noise is rain being squeezed from fresh hearts.