Mariner Urbanus

"Mariner" by H. Hamampour


Mariner Urbanus

Sunk to the eyes
in billowy bubbles and epidermal brine,
lying languid and long amidships
in my ancient porcelain bath tub
whose brass dragon’s feet
perched like clawed fists
at each smooth white rounded corner
on a trivet of rough-edged bricks,
stained tangerine orange
and melon yellow
after ages of sediment had dripped
hotly onto their exposed flanks,
all atop a copper meshed grate
where the soupy overspill
of old skin, garden soil, and concrete dust
could flow down searching
for the fellow pipes and portals
of other drains, and lustfully mingle
with the rainbow rivulets of run off
from strangers, mysterious women,
crippled mailmen, dogs,
and a black five-foot boa constrictor
we knew Ames kept on the second floor--
I felt at absolute One with the sea
within, gleaming with salt particles
at the sub-atomic level, and the body
of ocean only blocks distant, and even
the gushing of my own blood pumped
around the meat engine that housed me;
submerged yet afloat,
weightless yet powerful,
a captain, a titan, a Mer-man,
staring into the blank face
of the tub troll, with the pewter faucet
as proboscis, and my own toes
as misshapen wrist digits, he
who always attended me
and accompanied me
on my daily sailings.

Glenn Buttkus August 2010

To be posted as well on Magpie Tales 28