I don’t know exactly why it’s
Tantalizingly infuriating
To think of a journalist, ‘writer-in-residence’, falling asleep in his private bedroom
On a U.S. aircraft carrier, jolted awake by an alarm blaring
Man overboard
And he cannot do anything, so he lies in the dark and thinks of the ocean
In terms of his verses, Cowper’s and Golding’s, not as an unfeeling vortex below him
Which has just swallowed a fellow living being. Lies, and pretends to be part of the
Spectacle, the spokesperson of the anxious crowd; relishes the frenzy of immediacy.
Figures. God hates the press. That night, no one died.

“Lying in my rack. Alive.”
Of course you are! You were never in
Any danger. Picking up the flakes of terminology,
Viewing mundane events through sensationalist goggles,
Reality is incomparable
To the fantasy of your poetic nonsense. Once I used to be
Bitten by flights of whimsy, reading articles like this,
Wanted to jump ship right away but never did. It’s
For the best. Can you imagine me drowning
In the cold angry sea
My last thoughts being I wonder what half-assed literary reference
The writer-in-residence will link to me.