Satsuma Sunset

I want to say I am a boat or I am a man

or I am on a boat

motherfucker

in the blue chalky haze of a scene being painted

over calming waters in an industrial inlet

but as I string these words together I can’t even

though I can paint a perfect muddle

that may represent the blueprint of this Sunday

you wouldn’t understand

imagine the paling chopped vertical orange

streak of a reflection on the water’s surface

of a satsuma sun setting

on a postcard that no one will ever send

because no one writes anymore purely

to drop someone a note in the mail

yet even so we repurpose art on 3 x 5 cards

just as Monet had imagined it

to sell them and even so we repurpose postcards

for writing prompts

and write in an oversaturated market

of internet publishings with too few gates

and too many gatekeepers

motherfucker

I want to say I am a writer but the smudge

of smoke in the sky is just as much a cloud

as it is the billowing ejaculate of too many factory

smokestacks polluting the sky in Berlin

while their ovens burn with bodies—

just another genocide being manufactured;

in Gaza

motherfucker

there are no longer enough eyes

to watch the sun set