Port cities capture vigor, relevance rendered by gravity, asserted in the hull of a tanker square with cargo to/from Hong Kong, Nassau, Gothenburg. Transnational stencils are lessons in resource distribution—concentric spheres of the tropical, the factory, the market, the middleman.
Each port hole a moon socket, the poem a lazy eye cast upon capitols of industry and import/export, the canal a phenomenon of necessity, tectonic interventions prompted by the ideal line between Here and There.
In Marseilles, swastikas along the waterfront, semiotic injunctions against touristic pleasures, the rain also a memory, as sky or as window frame, the train otherwise without grammar, the day otherwise without reminders.
Tourism spiked the economy as the bartender spiked this drink and you went home with a stranger to another shore, this one flecked with cigarette butts and bottle caps—the ground an experiment in working class leisure. For each cap another degree of relief, like pissing by the side of the road, like giving the dog up for dead.