Cheatinweasel• Show poetry

2/15/05 Gulf Stream ain't no dream. It's a smell. You can't outrun it. You can't wash it off. It don't belong to you, it's a national treasure. And you can't bury it neither, No. It's the smell of wash rags dried under the sink, dirty garbage cans, long dead fish, fish not so long dead, fish that are still flopping, fish that are very much alive. Every kind of fish you ever knew about or imagined, you got pretty fish and ugly fish. Most fish fit one or the other. Then you got your bilges, lawd, lawd. Can you say Bilges? It don't rhyme with nothin' it just smells. Bad! Then there is the part of the smell that really stinks. You know what chum is? If you do, I don't need to say more. If you don't there ain't no way I can tell you. Take all that an mix it with wet sand from under a wharf or dock, blend in the scent of a dead body that's been floating in the Bayou for several days. Add the smell from the sewage plants in Mobile and Galveston that just run over from the heavy rains up north, then add the smell of fear, the fear that follows you when you go out to fish. Because somewhere out there is a shark big enough to make jaws look like a bait fish. And even if there ain't one as big, there are a million little ones, more than enough to eat Jaws down to the bone, in a minute, like Piranha with a goat. I was cruisin for Rock fish long about where Texas becomes Louisianna an somebodies Cow wandered down to the water an was wading in the surf. I was about to go on by when the water began to boil an I stopped to watch. It was two big Crocs and I don't know how many sharks. I guess they were dividing the spoils. The cow was kind enough to wait. I didn't.