Monday, June 21, 2004

Is this story start corny?

The River got too dirty. The City fired him.
Really, The River didn’t have many skills. Well, other than running and sliding and rippling, lapping at scummy sludge edges of pier and reeking of oil and eating garbage. He was good at those things. The City’s highest paid worker, in fact. He caught all the cash that was dropped. The dollar that flew from your fingers while digging your pockets for bus fare, that last windy Tuesday? There is The River’s pay. That, and the spare change that rains from the cracks in pedestrian bridges. The River was stingy, still. He stole food. If it dropped. Like a purposely clumsy waiter.

The River would gobble dead bodies of mob hits and suicides. Used shriveled condoms, junk needles and Starbuck’s Cups. Some nights, on calm nights he’d flow still and glass over. Reflecting The Moon in pine hues and glow golds. That is when The River remembers. Congestion of human filth didn’t clog him always. Once there dwelt live creatures inside him. Soft, stringy algaes and slick fish splash spawning. Sea clams, or something.

The River tugged for his flow. His original flow. Into her. Big wet lady. La Luna. Mein schones loch. She will distill my every impurity. Stir within her back to life renewed. I empty my liquid rush in your belly. Lost and smothered in seafoam, I’m splashing your shores. I am smoothing your sands. Damp curves of coast I crash- clunk!

A piss stream plunked into The River. A drunk and rich dinner cruise yuppie unloaded his gluttonous toxins. The River still sizzles in sting with each poison. The man on the dinner yacht left his suit pants undone.
The River gagged and slurped on the salts. It was not pure animal urine. He never could digest the synthetic shit. The alcohols, plastics and pills. Pesticides...
posted at 1:38 AM |