They don’t want you
wreckdiving
for fear, they say,
of sharks. 

For fear,
they say, of you
getting trapped and 
being swallowed.

Somewhere
in the wreckage
maybe an explanation
and perhaps a breath

of truly fresh air.
It makes no sense 
but maybe under the waves
there’s a better flag there,

one you could stand for
and salute in a clean
upright way in spite of
all the ocean above you

with its weight of
drowned history. Or, 
maybe it won’t be
that way at all for you

and you’ll come back up
struggling and gulping
but at least you’ll know.
You’ll know how the bodies

went overboard and how
rescue was forbidden or at least
restrained. You can decide then
whether or not you want to swim back

to the shore you left where
they’ll be waiting for you
with the same faces 
they’ve always shown you,

and what you want to say
and do as you come up on shore
with new eyes for them
and their own suffocating fear.

Soundtrack:
“Walk Don’t Run,”

but I’m running.
I’m always running. 
Do the ironists
care? How should I decolonize
my shoes
when I can’t stop
to take them off?

There’s a fucking settler
everywhere I look. I can’t
get them off my back, or my 
mind. How does “Land Back”
work when the land
is thick with them and their
history? When half my genes
are settler genes? Maybe
the truest part of me
is settler. I feel
broken settling for that.
Maybe I should surrender to it
and just run through the colony
waving and smiling
till I drop dead and then that hole
they put me in
or  the land where they scatter my ashes
will become land I get back.

And how do I stop
being a capitalist asset
when I’m so damn hungry
and money is so short?
Do the ironists care? Are they still
laughing, calling a dead man like me
who’s running in capitalist shoes
from capitalism and colony and
the endlessly fucking settlers
a lackey?

Maybe the problem is that I’m
running down the top of a fence
barely an inch wide and I can’t decide
which side will cradle me when I fall. 
Maybe I should listen to the words
of the song. 

I don’t trust anyone 
who had a hand in building this fence,

especially me. No Marxist,
no Libertarian, no capitalist 
apologists…settlers all,

and no one able to explain
how to soften the human cost,
how to even partially break
the looming fall.

The fields on either side
are too wide to let this fence
define them, but here I am,
running like it matters 
which side I will die on.

something’s
breaking not like glass
but like a bone

one can take this
as being something
no one can take or

one can take this
as how things
grow

one would be
wrong on both counts
something breaking

not like a ceiling or
a floor after a bomb
or meteorite

it’s more like a bone
or lots of bones
and more damage

than just bones
more shards afterward
sticking out sticking into

flesh and 
look there’s no blood
how can that be

after such a crash 
as this where something’s
broken perhaps forever

no healing from this
and still so little blood
perhaps the victim

was already close to 
drained when the break
came after falling

from such a height
will they stand up again
will they rise after this

the crutches
are sawn almost through
after all 

yet another broken aid
upon which hope for this break
must fall