Sinking Feeling

I stand on the deck… white knuckled hands
Grasping the rail
I hold on as we submerge
My lungs should have exploded
As the lights of civilization
Streetlights, neon signs and dimly seen stars
Fade into inky blackness
Along with gurgling, echoing screams
Of my fellow countrymen
Calloused hands and Manicured hands
Interlock and Pirouette towards
Their watery grave
It seems an eternity before we hit…bottom
A moonless, leaden world
Devoid of hope and sight
Yet I can still “see”
A life preserver snaps its tether
And jets past me
U.S.S. America emblazoned across it
Our ship of state… has sunk
The “debris” field is enormous
Humanity, Compassion, Dignity
Ignorance, Hubris, Avarice
Gasping guppies
Grasping yuppies
I-pods and Monetary Gods
X-Box Games and Faux Fox Shame
Assume a new, permanent address
Along with one white, sightless, befuddled snail
Who finds a new home: A Starbucks cup
On the night of April 14/15, 1912
The mighty Titanic
Her gleaming decks awash in ambition and wealth
Pursued a course of reckless abandon
Of glory…”Rushing” headlong into disaster
The “lower” classes proud…yet still groveling
Trapped below… behind doors of inequality
Now I, and I alone witness
The cyclical nature of history
Watching, two miles under the sea
As the The America
Nearly one hundred years later
Halved, shattered, splintered
Hatred, Bigotry and Injustice having
Worm-holed her “unsinkable” hull
Arrives at the destination
She seems so inexorably destined to achieve
The Titanic, victim of man’s greed and folly
Now has “a soul mate” in her fateful, frigid tomb
Eighty years passed
Before the Titanic was found
Euphemistic dreams of “raising” her
Dashed… like a champagne bottle
Once did, long ago… across her sturdy, imperious bow
How long, I ruminate
Before the America “is found”
Before hopes of “raising” her
Are forever extinguished
By the cold, icy grip of reality, Mother Earth
And eternity…my fingers quickly shred to bone
And the flesh rips soundlessly from my body
My eyes explode outward from my head
One floating up…and looking down
One sinking down…and looking up
Forever…looking up