The Whiteness of The Whale

On the way home tonight

I chanced to see

the ghosts of barefoot girls

dancin' in the moonlight

in between the Green River rocks

smug with slime,

lust and helplessness,

desire and control.

Something up here

drains the truth 

out of the sun

and fills our pale bodies

with the coldest aspect.

Mark my words

because each one of them

is a grave.

In Aurora Avenue gray

the highway skirts

the ridge ways of

cheap trick nihilism.

Something in the moss 

that prom dress blankets

the rotting ground 

river running along the black bed

burns the cold air

and everything it breathes 

white hot.

Up here,

the dead, the living, and I,

ascend numbly into the brutal opaque,

knowing full well he wrote,

"It was the whiteness of the whale 

that above all things appalled me."