hole is to sink as whole is to sync

The door swells in the rain
and I can’t get in
stuck with the preternatural night of rain
where I’m left to ponder and presume
piss behind the shed

In the lab you synthesize peptides
and hide like a spider evading the rain
squeezing through cracks
Your fear is something we could not measure
In a 20 cc syringe and test on the lab rats
we do not understand it
so we slip into cracks
when it drenches like rain

The bones swell with pain
and we can’t get in
stuck with the perpetual night of rain
where we’re left to roam and rot
lab rats in a maze

In the night we sing show tunes
with tongues that know each other
like rain knows the sky

Even without the sterility of bleach white lab coats and latex gloves
my fear was something you could measure
the way a spider can measure the key his web sings in
This was how you caught me
like a spider dancing the tango
with silk wrapped around inert prey

Sometime in October you kissed me
It hasn’t stopped raining since
It’s August
and the Ark is coming soon
from the window of your laboratory,
between the satin mosaic of spider web,
I watched them build it-
Dr. Noah and his research group,
collaborating with collateral damage

The world swells with no drain

and I can’t get on
or out or up
or in

We were left to canoe to your office on the top floor
where we ate the rats
First we cooked them off the bunsen burner
now we eat them off the bone

I heard rumours the rain would flee after forty days
It is night three hundred and thirty one
and you still trim your beard
with rust ravaged scissors

Everything is wrought with rust or mildew
Your murky mind began following the spiders
but they were just oscillating
making a web

The spiders flourish in the rain
now we know what they were doing in those cracks
laying eggs in damp darkness

At night we curl up in our web
and I thank God we were so wicked
He drowned the world

Some things only swell in the lonely rain

John Martin, The Deluge; 1834.