And the ships were fogbound for three days
Their hulls split smiling wide by the spray of the channel
We're hovering with them in the dimness of a drunk sun crawling under
A dusk devoid of color
Welcome rainclouds follow countless bouts of bleakness
Slate-gray miasma of refinery exhaust swirls
Mingling skyward with the overcast scene and all it's gulls and cranes
Cawing in the dampness toward their roosts under jetties
Those frayed hurricane tarps on dilapidated rooftops
Laid creased and faded by morose Texas suns
Epitaphs blotting dismal landscapes of copper and olive
And smashed concrete begging to be reclaimed by nature
As all of it is when the seasons heave
Our interim footnotes disguised by the power of purpose
The notion that one day our role will be to make life better for each other
(Oh, how we loathe being found out)
Instead of grimacing, sage-like, naked and angelic in our blindness by the mirror
While each shred of truth oscillates into blue ruin and we shake, shake, shake
Mesmerized by houses where we once lived and stories we must have led in them
In varied and skewed alternate realities, and in dreams we once had
Some of which paint homage to our own grim summers here
Some in which where my roads leading home were less obfuscated
Instead being laid out like the chemtrail creases drawn solemn on our brows
(We won't notice them until our thirties)
This far south, everything is the ageless vacuum we've known since conception
Thusly we're bound to the irony of it all by dull tradition and the will to break it
Among all other shams bred real by the ambitions of confused white men
Their warring remains reigning evident within my crooked heart
Under whichever corner of earthen floor it may be buried
Your guess is as good as anyone's