Help
Kelp
Yelp
Whelp
Swell!

What would help?
What would be of use?
What is any good?
Hello? What would help??

There’s a cold wind blowing now across the cross-eyed waves
The helmsman’s lost the wooden wheel
It spins wild, thwacking his red wheltering hands as it spins
There’s a cold bracing wind rolling through the air
churning us up, spitting out our teeth
I’m afraid we’re all gonna drown

In the cave where dwell blind albino minnows newts and rolly-pollies
lived a girl surpassing fine
shaped like a fertility goddess
with dark hair reckless and restless tumbling over her pale naked shoulders
Deep in the impenetrable cavern where the only sound was the drip drip of stalagtites forming
lived a woman lonely and cold in the clammy water-bleeding curving walls
I asked to be set into the mine elevator
rickety and broke-down
unweildy and rusted and squeak creak groaning
fifty years condemned
Put me in the bale and let’s see if she’s got one more mile ride in her!
And you, who would’ve liked to be friends out in the sunshine meeting soft grass and bouquet-trees, tugged and tugged until the over-rusted lever gave way
And I fell so fast and furious jumbled up in sharp breaking metals
until the whole configuration of man and iron cage and ancient chain splatted onto cool subaltern rock.
A mistake.
The beauty deep in the earth heard some clanking explosion far away in the dark
She’d been washing her perfect hair in a pristine creek
She sat up, squeezing the water out of the folds of majesty I’d sought to catch on the backside of my scaly hand, pushing gently to one side, revealing her ready smile so bright that it overtook the darkness, made our somber darkness a summer day on a sunny deck with umbrellas in our drinks
She sat up and thought, “what was that!?”

I give up
you know?
i can’t put it together
and I’m tired
there’s a monster
in us all
I’d thought maybe
I could push against
the Evil
and somehow help
and somehow stop
the fall-apart that’s spreading
and contaminating and winning and shit
but i see now that i now can only
sleep until god
comes in glory
and tells me where i went wrong

on being a man with a butterfly net:
wtf?!?
what am I supposed to do with this thing?
And this stupid tan multi-pocketed, thick-socked, leather-lace-ups, white pith-helmet getup?
what am I supposed to catch here in this field of scratchy sharp neck-high weeds?
goddammit!