Black Pool

Even the truant youth, playing the mad
general to three offsiders — "You!
Give me that surfboard NOW!'; and to the girl,
waist-deep, "Open your legs, I'll dive through.
Go on, you fucking retard!' — even he,
vandal at the banquet, looks on with the rest:
eyes fixed, ablaze, hands gripping the board.
An exposed strip of titanium-hide
flashes burnt orange, miming the molten sun:
cyphers twist and coil on a silvery screen,
grow faint beneath my shadow. Near the end,
night colours — mulberry, bruise-blue — as ink
jets through the pool, crystal turned to soot,
bleeds into a river pulled seaward.