The Lighthouse (A Movie Poem)

Doldrums, doldrums

eviler than the devil.

–

The Cyclopes’ prism eye

revolves around me

in a mechanical chatter.

–

It calls out desires at night,

a mermaid cast up on shore

–

that awakens with the caw

of a thousand slaughtered gulls

–

sending me scrambling

back to the darkness,

–

afraid to touch

the brightness of hell.

–

Doom to scrub the deck

till shining like

a sperm whale’s pecker;

–

falling in the whitewash

and awakening to a gull

worming at me boot laces;

–

tugging barrels, lugging barrels,

spit polishing the insides of them.

–

Gulls have the souls of sailors

hidden inside their caw,

–

and when the weathervane

points to the east side wind

–

for seven months the waters

be too great to launch or land

–

and I be damned near

wedded to this here light.

–

Or she be a figment of my imagination

and I just be gull food

to peck on on these rocks?