In your clammy dungeon, you check
the water level, the pressure gauge
over and over and over.
In clammy heat,
your breath is a dark wet thing
that crystallizes down the overflow pipe.
You’re paid to
suffocate in peace,
fastened to the one chair,
the one torn magazine.
It hits you like the hiss of vents,
the sigh of safety valves...
your job is making sure
no one ever knows you're here.
All day, you reconcile how
up there, the heat is almost weightless
while here, its heaviness straps
itself to your lungs like a suffocating vest.
That's what you drag around with you
as you validate the taunting numbers,
check the water level, the pressure gauge,
their equivalent in you.
over and over and over.
In clammy heat,
your breath is a dark wet thing
that crystallizes down the overflow pipe.
You’re paid to
suffocate in peace,
fastened to the one chair,
the one torn magazine.
It hits you like the hiss of vents,
the sigh of safety valves...
your job is making sure
no one ever knows you're here.
All day, you reconcile how
up there, the heat is almost weightless
while here, its heaviness straps
itself to your lungs like a suffocating vest.
That's what you drag around with you
as you validate the taunting numbers,
check the water level, the pressure gauge,
their equivalent in you.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, New English Review and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”, ”Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Amazing Stories and River and South.