the flooded boarding house

Labyrinthine street tattoo etched in grid grime
where we skulk upon the shore of cities like
driftwood trash lulling in the tide. What you
mean to say to me is nothing that a little rudeness
wouldn't cover up, that the mannequin display of
fashioned silk couldn't survive, but we think
like fish in shallow pools spiraling in locked
rock, limited in natural gestures by the creation
that preceeded our generation's scattering from spray.

I broke a pencil when I switched metaphores,
from spotlight nature to unnatural illumination
in the boardinghouse halls of madness where you
learn the sun like a message and the tired trees
hang their exhaustion like the heads of drugged homeless.
Ancient pains are brought from heavy sadness through
the doorframes peeling like old picture frames
while suffering photographs lean out
through broken shutters, holding cigarettes and bras.

When the sea rises to swallow our poverty
is when I will ask for my rights to bemoan
my lack of rights in the face of a swallowed
monolith traced by opaleye and calico bass,
when the ocean heaves its mass above the city
shore is when I will professionally cry
on the arms of a coral statue guarding the
entrance to the sunken treasureship where I
found your pearl earrings and your lips found
my kiss.