You ride the mid-Atlantic 

wave, flapping like a whip 

among the undulant plastic, your skin 

a streak of silver in the wastewater.

You writhe, ache with stink 

from the oil spills, algae-stained fishnets 

gnarled in the slurry; below the sea shelf, barnacles 

strewn in rows, each carved 

like an organ pipe, 

playing the drowning melody 

of a past life as you peel away

from rot, blotches of gangrene 

and icteric pus. 

Your many slippery-selves squirm 

through flesh-puddles, 

blind and amniotic, mangled 

in identities. And while you bob 

in the rush-tide down the gash, 

the seam of your body

brushes against rock shards, 

your proboscis plunged into 

this maggot-infested world, 

here where aquifers are wrung dry 

by water-drunk machines, the language 

of your iridescent existences 

manifests with the tongue 

of decay, word 

for putrid word— 

you’re sodden, un-sanitized, 

cavorting in the dirt of your own 

making; if life can be 

anything, then let it

be ruinous, filth, 

the ammonia kiss of a million parasites 

burrowing into your skin, incontinence  

or rectus bleed; desire, 

too, can be like that—

septic, feral, your body 

distended 

in gnawing light.