WORD FROM BABEL

buildings floating
on a sea of fog
passing me by in the night

out at sea
a foghorn moans
a great prehistoric beast

who would
at any moment
stomp ashore

a Godzilla gorging
on a human or two
before retreating to

the time before
time was
God not in his heaven

the ghosts of people
walk about the streets
the living and the dead

all the one
as the fog
eats the world

my building is just
several countries squashed
into several squalid rooms

no one would live here
if they had to
they have to

we the people
lost
even to ourselves

Finnish floats
out of broken windows
Spanish slides under bolted doors

Italian caught in
filthy Venetian blinds
Irish blocking up the sink

the great stink
of humans trying
to get by

?think?
the last thing anyone would
want to do

we get by
by getting by
weirdos amongst weirdos

a welter of tongues
each a stranger to the other
getting in a lather

the babble
from Babel
lost in language

I alone
remain alone
self kept to self

walk these mean streets
like a fictional detective
in some dime store novel

buildings floating
on  a sea of fog
passing me by in the night