The Well

The Well

I found the well

And down I went

Led by my thirst

On the ladder

I’d made up

Along the way

Out of many

Hard dead things.

A stench of rot

And ancient damp

Rose up in spores

Uric and fungal.

My feet struck clay.

I lit the candle.

Through webs like threaded frost

A rat skeleton lay guttering,

With an x-ray litter at its breast.

Assorted insect slimes and silverings.

Brittle peel that, stooping down,

I thumbed to dust.

Plastic bottles, bags and bottle-tops.

Butts and blackened matches.

A condom foil

                            but not the rubber.

Tins and cans and aluminium glitterings.

A toadstool eating muck and dark

and itself. A worm wrapped around a lollipop

Stick. A hammer head. Newsrag headlined

With crusts of old shit. Shreds And evidential

Scatterings innumerable and other.

Unseen protozoal herd of  billions

Disturbed at its feed

Absorbs, calculates my presence,

Then turns in tidal surge towards my heat,

Seed of mud

Now wills to eat

Communally

Its human fruit. 

Hungers in the blood throw up our dreams.

Hopes are masks our brutal instincts wear.

Cravings inside matter sparked up life

And keep it motoring.

My investigation had determined that

It wasn’t a well after all

But the cellar section of a lift shaft

For a hotel

That wasn’t built.

Greed’s our reason, cause and woe.

Our legacy is poisoning.

No water.

Nothing whatsoever left behind for me to drink.

I turned to the laddered wall,

The candle losing glow.

My shadow lurched

Like a giant struck.

Behind my back

Someone even thirstier than I

Had pulled the ladder up.