Each day, by twenty thousand cruder counts

of oil, our gulf becomes a new Black Sea

alike to state and science, who pronounce

this eruption our worst well in history.

What algebraic voodoo now may we

summon by some drilling of the moon,

to choke the concupiscence of a zombie,

a real, real creature of a black lagoon?

I feel I and my statesmen must exist

in order to provide our country’s neighbors

with more of substance, so the optimist

may live with more content in boring labors;

or sate a hungering for the dramatic,

perhaps safe space in which to ruminate.

Storms and blasts have left a vapid attic

for our recovery, a room’s-full to abate

this jerking — as if we are side-stepping crabs

in iridescent pools of lifeless shrimp,

through currents like retractable morgue slabs,

beach agues where the grouse and egret limp.