Entropy on the Adriatic

Too easily drunk
and too easily
dragged into the lake from excessive self-examination in rippling tides.
Hats, coats, tails, shoes, everything. Detritus
coupled with a forgetfulness, and a slow-moving current.
This crude twine is leading us down winding sun-baked alleys that feel too tired for poetry,
too tired for drunk tourism, sinking balefully,
having filled their boots with cheese, meats, churches, and rotting flowers.
It was easy enough to rewrite the creation myth.
Thrusting into the sky, tearing bits out and eating it,
filling cups with sun-blue wine.
That twisting jasmine seems clinging.
It has wet toes. We scramble around, panicked, clinging at rocks,
sinking balefully, and singing.

Far out, where it gets dark,
the piercing shrill shout, white oil flesh on lazuli silk,
bare and blinding high-exposure,
husks of words that threaten their own erasure,
I wonder if I’ve heard it. Or made it up.