The compulsion to survive

is a hindrance in disguise

I am a witness

to this body;

I bear witness to it;

I am its anonymous witness

I follow its codes of conduct,

its jerky leaps of pranks

The sum of its organs

is my perception of them,

but perception is a reflex

in a seagull's eye

high above the lighthouse cliff

The Eastern haiku moon

rests without choice

high on the firmament

The organs gather

in a collective effort

within my hypothetical abode,

in pearl after pearl

in the night's passage

through the ocean's banquet of hulls;

Titanic

a sumptuous twelve-course communion;

the moon

forever narcissistic

in the surface high above;

time measured in oxygen atoms

in a meticulously sealed coffin

where everything, as it should,

ceases,

on an underwater stage

in the world's gaze;

five detached from the world

on a circumnavigation out of time,

journeying through the cold humidity of misfortune

in a stench of vomit, urine and feces;

$250,000 per person

The thoughts that roam

are faded deep-sea fish without eyes