Life on the Houseboat

O great works of little faith,
Miss Joanna, you old crone,
Drag like the anchor of this houseboat
On our exalted nighttime existence,

Rocking in the wake of a deep trawler
With a crossbones on its flag.
The bay the color of illuminated manuscripts.
The fish hatchery tended by a blind woman,
An old chapel under the radar antenna.

We’re dumpster diving with the octopus
Wrestler from the Shriner parade
Whose little hearse idles nearby,
We’re invited to dinner with the disagreeing Stylites
Living on pillars within shouting distance,

The ground bird-shit-brown from visitation.
It’s our selves, our true selves that must be
Saved from the body snatcher’s bone saw.
And you’ve got one hand on the light switch

And one hand on the newel post
Carved with polygraph hatchings and Brigid's crosses,
One hand on the eye of providence sponge cakes,
And one hand on the walkie-talkie
In a barrel going over Niagara.

Church on wheels, church of the truant master,
Ruined church in which no rain will fall,
Append your frieze with the lord’s troops
Suffering in the face of God and show us some teeth.

Just like this houseboat with its dentils,
Just like the killer icicles
Hanging from its fisheye portal,
A decoration that makes the inanimate
Alive with the spirit, dodgy and prone

To becoming water, that great life force of our origins.
Everything’s an oil slick, phosphorescence, vapors.
A thousand bent props turning in the sea of nostalgia.
And you too, Joanna, at night on this old boat,
Your gargoyle reflection on the sea.