In Memoriam

A gray, gray mist fills my open mouth with silence,
for I have entered the damp slumber of a death.

One last horn blast has grumped off through the fog,
which settles now in an endless, dimensionless damp blanket
over the gray, gray sea where I float
(humming soundlessly)
on a tube of rubber:

a tube losing air in one thin, desperate stream
through a tiny hole that hisses and bubbles,
bubble and hiss,
as I bob indirectly into a gray, gray forgetfulness.

A knife
(which for a while
I stabbed into my arm and thigh and hand and eye -
searching in vain for pain, or blood)
now trails in my gray, gray fingers.

And I wonder if a knife could want,
if it would want to feel
the gray, gray rubber split beneath its razor edge -

to at long last sink me,
hissing,
into the gray and waiting sea.