SLAM!

"Invalid Item" 

To starboard is land,
hidden at night, but I know it's right there.
I gaze that direction while on the bridge,
imagining shore within arms reach of our wake,
feeling the ship hug the curves
of the coast as if they were lovers.
With the right wind you can hear
a smooch of gunfire from the African warzone
twelve nautical miles away.

The land: “I hate you!”
The sea: “No, you don't really mean that!”

Sure enough,
in the morning, the land would still be there –
a thin strip of beige – too afraid to run away.
The cities simply scream at us
like the fishermen in their dhows
shaking their fists at our behemoth
destroyer riding through their nets.

It was this or sifting
through tsunami victims.
The Captain: “This will mean GWOT recognition.”

We took on ice cream in Jebel Ali
for Valentine's morale, but now it melts,
the heavy equatorial air
alternating wafting dangling like current
from one watchstander to the next
until we throw the paper bowls of sticky pools overboard.

I wonder: “What morale programs do the terrorists have?”
I wonder: “What kind of person would I be if
the only ice cream I could taste was in the afterlife?”

The lookouts continue staring
at the sliver of moon sinking out of sight
toward their sweethearts
on the other hemisphere,
their tongues but not their desires
cooled by the dessert.