They'll Send For A Chopper

I was working on an isolated and unmanned oil platform once when we were told that because of inclement cold weather moving in there was a chance the helicopter might not be able to pick us up until the morning. I wrote this poem soon thereafter...




They'll send for a chopper,
Ol' Boy, they'll send for it,
or we'll die out here in this hard world
of sea and steel,
with our testicles shriveled and gone,
our failed hands cupping them
in a last attempt
to fight the sea-cold night,
the relentless drowning wind,
frozen hands calling with hoarse tongues
the word "warmth" to escaping blood,
to blood that knows better,
knows a warmer place than in the wrinkled
clutch of our shrinking hairy nut-sacks.

They'll find us corpses in the morning, Ol' Boy,
if they do not send for a chopper tonight,
huddled together like pork chops on the
floor of a butcher's freezer,
our stiff hands tucked tightly between our legs
where the night's effort will be evident,
new meaning given to the words "blue balls,"
nature in reverse,
shrinking and folding,
calling back up
what took our entire lives to drop
with manly weight.

Yes, Ol' Sport, when they pry apart our knuckles,
the hollow emptied space beneath our frozen hands,
where our voluminous scrotums used to proudly hang,
will be tale enough
of the damage the cold and sunless hours have caused,
if they do not send for a chopper this night.

6.2007