The river running wild leaps its banks,
bursting its borders like a wayward child.
Escaping, ravaging the roots and soils of fertile fields,
it defies the invisible lines of counties, states,
and nations, and even the confines of gravity’s unrelenting grip,
spouting suddenly skyward then slamming down
in the fierce thrashings of tormented winds.
Petulant and brooding it pouts after it batters the docks and
the filthy edges of the city,
angry that something could be harder and dirtier.
Yet currents shape more than earth and wood and stone.
They bend the places inside where the child still resides.
Eddies and riptides of foul, repugnant invasions
of fists and cocks and tongues and
furious, fevered, sneering, venomous, vile
words spat at light speed that
slice and carve into open and innocent
ears and eyes and mouths and hairless orifices;
places they haven’t even been told a name for yet.
Roughly hewn,
carved from alabaster and ebony flesh,
rugged from the river’s razor edge,
scraped raw, wayward they flow,
children once
and yet still as young as yesterday
and not at all,
like a river running wild leaping its banks,
losing its borders from places and times and people
without boundaries.
12/7/96