Firewater

Last night the sea bid me to kneel at the feet of its wind-booming welcome.
So I pushed past the rough-hued texture of the storm as through a closetful of sailor wool,
Trembling for fear an earthquake would swirl the world into Aphroditic rage
And drown me in the corners of its water-black walls.

I leaned there like a ship steering my nose as though a pointed bow
Into the surf of the West's littoral regions,
Unsheltered by the cold and at a loss for sails just to say
I had stood there
Like that,
Drilling resolute into the shore of the East's sandy exhale,
Staring into its eye and ready to colonize my canton
If only to meet my captain's fate beside.

But alas,
In a fit of admitted retreat,
I scurried back to my sister's old gas-guzzler of a car parked on the hill,
Panicked and trying to preempt any aftershocks with my sprint.
My legs fluttered like white flags across the shadows of windy palms,
Outlines of swaying sentinels and other blurry bodies obscured and weighted down
By the adjoining width of a world-swallowing darkness,
An apocalypse proclaiming,

One day there will be a new world that's just now waiting to happen,
One with junk piles of computer chips and Styrofoam;
Oil spills and burning oceans that will outlive our children's children
And any irrational scares I have of being buried alive.