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Melissa Koe Nov 2014
The wind blew strongly. Out at sea, the fisherman’s small boat swayed in rhythm with the waves. He stood up and adjusted the sail, in case the wind blew it off. After so many years of earning a living as a fisherman, he has made peace with the sea – he no longer feels sea sick. Oh, but he feels a certain kind of sickness…… a different kind. His eyes filled with tears as he shifted his gaze from his worn out canvas sails to the horizon where the sun is just about to set. The sky above him is slightly orange – but is dulled by the gray of the storm clouds shifting in.

                He thanked the gods for the sky above and the sea below him, albeit the upcoming storm. He has recently lost his daughter, Fatema to the sea. His grief is still fresh, it still cuts deep. He lost his daughter to the tsunami that destroyed the fishing village. He has lost all his belongings – but nothing belonging to him will ever be as valuable as Fatema. Yes, grief makes him sick – and he has a good reason for that. When they found her, her body was trapped between five pieces of driftwood – it was a gruesome sight. How ironic is it? The arms of Neptune have always supported him throughout his life – making sure he earned a living and yet, the same menacing arms betrayed him and took Fatema away.

                For that, he was angry with the gods. How could they take away a life as easily as they gave it? He snapped out of his thoughts and raised the back of his hand to his eyes to wipe away the tears. His musings aren’t going to help. He has to begin sailing to find a shelter from the storm that is rolling in or else he won’t make it through the night. For the past week or so, he has been living in his small boat, making sure his stomach is full by fishing for small fish and crustaceans. He fixed his sail and began to sail in the direction of a small cove he is familiar with which will provide adequate shelter for tonight.

                As he sailed, he started to feel lonely. He reached his hand into his pocket and pulled out a locket with Fatema’s picture in it. He brought it to his face and gently kissed it, gripping it in his hand. As he sailed nearer the cove, moonlight began to illuminate the prow of his boat. When he is near enough to the shore, he skillfully measured the depth with sight alone, and lowered the anchor to make sure his boat remained in that position till dawn.
                As he descended from his boat, he waded through the water. Both of his arms are full of dried driftwood for him to start a fire tonight. He heard the distant sound of crickets and an owl. He walked toward the beach, heading towards a small cave and entered it. He checked the ground to make sure it was dry before he started a fire using the driftwood. The crackling of fire accompanied by the distant rumbling of thunder brought comfort to his ears. The flames that rose and vanished combined with the smell of the smoke left a silage – a lingering presence that soothed him. They reminded him of how he used to read stories of beasts and princesses alike to Fatema when she was a young girl until she fell asleep in his arms. Those days are long gone now. He stood up and headed back to his boat to set up the fishing nets for his meal later on tonight. He fixed the nets close to the shore before walking back to the cave to the warmth of the fire. He did not know what to do. He was supposed to sail back to the mainland by next week but the storm has been slowing him down. He listened to the rhythm of the waves crashing against his boat and drifted off to sleep……

                He opened his eyes. He did not hear any crackling from the fire nor feel the warmth from it. When he looked down, the fire has been extinguished. The moon was so high and bright now he only needed the fire for warmth. Just as he was about to stand up to fetch more wood from the boat, he heard a sound. Yes, there was a slight drizzle but it wasn’t the sound of rain hitting the sand. It was a soft, melodious voice which was….singing.
“May you sail fair to the far fields of fortune,
with diamonds and pearls at your head and your feet
and may you need never to banish misfortune,
may you find kindness in all that you meet.”

                It was the lullaby he sang to Fatema as a young girl. He began to feel excited and ignored the voice at the back of his head telling him he was insane. He looked out and saw her – Fatema, sitting on a rock. He called out to her and she looked back at him, saying something he has been yearning to hear from her – “Papa.” He was speechless and could not believe his eyes. She donned the black dress they found her in, but she barely had any scratches on her; she did not even look wounded. Instead of walking towards him, she flashed her sweetest smile and started walking towards the beach. She beckoned for him to follow her. He ran towards her, constantly calling out to her but she did not reply. She held out her hand for him to hold, and he did.

                One more step and she will reach the water now. “Fatema, what are you doing?” “Papa, just come along with me.” With those few words…..he felt like he was in a trance. There were so many questions running through the back of his mind but he ignored all of them. Was he hallucinating? He turned to his left as they waded nearer to the sea – the fishing net that he placed near his boat had a small crab in it. The moonlight that shone onto the sea reflected on her beautiful features – her curly, black hair and light brown eyes. With every step he took, he felt more nervous, confused, and excited at the same time.

                The water level is up to their chest now.  On the second day after Fatema died, when he was very much in pain, he made an analogy about grief by comparing it to the nearest thing to him. Grief is like the sea. It drowns you while everyone else is swimming. He felt more familiar towards it….. it did not seem as foreign to him anymore. If so, he is “literally” being consumed by grief as they waded deeper into the sea. He did not mind though – this is the story of a man who desperately wants his daughter back. He did not care if he was hallucinating or if she was a ghost. He does not know where she is taking him, but he wants to follow his daughter to who-knows-where; for to him, that is paradise, be it in the depths of the sea or the height of the skies.

                He can no longer see the moon.
An essay I wrote for English exam.
one hour write-up.
bugsy Oct 2018
There once was beauty beyond belief
In far north Queensland’s barrier reef
Beneath the surface of the sea
There lay a world of fantasy

Amid the shallows of the deep
Countless crustaceans crawled and creeped
A place so different from the land
Until it was touched by humans hand

Now polluted by plastic sedimentary and decay
Has our only solution been washed away
Once a wondrous landmark to behold
Gone in a heart beat, the oceans tale, told

Although there a politicians that still deny
A warming ozone will bid the coral colours goodbye
Littered white graveyards accomplished the sin
If only we had thrown our ******* in the bin

A tremendous story of ecological distress
Hopefully we can learn from this disastrous mess
/gt
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2020
pop culture... yeah... that yawn...
borrowed from the t.v....

   belle delphine... makes a comeback:
                                                       ­    i'm back...

       i must be a real riddle...
                                              though...­

      there i was thinking:
sorry... i was on auto-pilot...
i started to think of...

                harley quinn -
ava max - sweet but a ******...

trouble: i know what a tease
of regret looks like...
i also know what...
a make-shift...
nazgul harem of bulgarian
looks like... too...

        a tease of regret:
a former girlfriend...
striptease of a follow-up
narrative...
very nice... oh oh so nice!

but this one is clearly not beyond:
being a push-over...
belle delphine is no harley quinn:
i.e. ******* seriously sober...
**** your entranced: drunk...
******* sober overtly sober twice...

but... for the bathwater...
and... no...
i am the omega man...
on the list... of... allowed...
men... to *****...
into a genocide tissue
of... banking on genes:
without a ****-up
mother and father sort of
narrative...

         for the drunk:
the sobering whirlwind of reality...
because when rich people
like... should... i... inject...
myself... with some... broown show-gar?!

like i once asked an aesthetician:
i guess in reverse...
i was put under the scalpel and:
the selfless dictum of medicine...
he asked me: what books?
i asked him: quo vadis?

                i thereby managed
to burn the bookmark...
who was sane enough to salvage
the book i was reading?

    clued in on the: beside the brothel
antics...
   this clearly aesthetic girl...
this money making
crazy wheel this buttocks of
supra-roulette...
   when man and death...
the trough... the rhine valley
of trenches and brick-making
tactics for the ***** pederasts
on top...
those cherries those readily...
and thereby... easily...
cusps of iced cream...

                prostitutes speaking...
their gimp and limp-sidekick...
hard-on...       "procrastinations"...
to rhyme to rap...
by the way it looks like:
to rhyme is to rap:
to rap is to rhyme:
  
cookie dough oh oh *******...
and crisp-et... cookie ok: dunking...
slippery and swoon... and sweat...
   boy george fickle...
somehow browning... and none of that...
best dead before:
there was ever a best before date...

and then....
                      MA-GI-C!

playing a game of caesar's thumb:
      versed... in pollice verso?
          how do you play a game of
caesar's thumb?

oh... well... you will require a female maine ****
cat... and some... adamant moth...
the game works... like:
you proving to the beast:
you are not... toying with the moth...
the moth is a lesser creature
to both of you...

how does one play a game of caesar's thumb?
when one only has...
an agitated moth to catch once in a while...
and a maine **** cat:
to give attention to...
with a clenched fist:
with the entombed moth trying
to wriggle its way with
a fluttering of the wings...

   there's also that female
mosquito...
clenched onto by a pinch involving
one of her leg-work limbs...
and being a female...
she pulled and tugged and made
a "dialectic" of the verbs associated
with that limb extension...
a male maine **** cat would
have made a feast of her...
like he would of the cobwebs...

she escaped with 5 legs... to her original 6...
but a month...
i can't disfigure...
too quick for the lassy...
i held the moth in my clenched
fist like a rattle of fluttering
wings teasing...
not enough...
top bored from having
the impossible catch of the night...

the moth always remains: intact...
alive...
either cat catches the moth...
or leaves ones bedroom:
with a blooming gloom
of boredome....

but that's how to keep intact
a "sanity"...
a visit to the brothel...
becomes... a typo-
       for a shop only butchers are only
allowed to... inhabit...
    the sentencing of meat...
the clarity of heaving a life
of a moth in one's clenched fist:
and there's a thirst...
of the fist: to draw that lost samble
of: the begrudged familiarity
of language: and given that...
it's all in 21st century crude / rudimentary...
and rhyme...
            
       no caged beacon of the heavens...
of a lost circumvent...
caged lottery of the rhyme
of being perpetually caged...
       for the loot of **** and cockrel loitering...
like: morn is the cry to whine!

a game of caesar's thumb...
there was once a clenched fist: and a thirst for
blood...
now... a maine **** she, cat...
and a moth... fluttering...
like... an agitated petal-wing-and-rose...
too many "bored"
marihuana junkies stalking these
english streets come twilight...
one almost bumped into...

agitated by my poker facing
the already agitating grey-ish...
by the number...
by the number:
                   what-what of...
if he be not the king george:
having to give up h'america...
then he's no helen mirren...

          a game of caesar's thumb:
any and if all be owned:
that antithesis of a game of chess...
a game of both
kings and paupers...
3D dynamic: and madmen!

"revision": belle delphine...
cold... hearted... capitalist at... brain-sizzle...
but... gravitating toward
two outlets of fiction....
   belle delphine ≠ harley quinn...
a little ******... oh so hot...
hot tender me oh my ***:
posion the daisy...
poison rose should... a rose be all
the more... already... poisoned...

a visit to the brothel:
a visit to the butcher shop:
for the cho- chop and chopping assurances...
the crooked crown on an already
crooked head...
the statue of charles II
in soho sq....
        
              i most certainly paid for much
less than this ****-tenure-of-a-tease....
but then... to have an argument...
you'd need to mingle with a bunch
of thieves... murdering slob-gatherers
of phlegm...

            poisoned red-bunch of
a wholly rosed-up affairs of loiter...
and time: such a prized dead-end of
eventuality...

            the father the god:
the sacrificial lamb...
because... god forbid she was
ever to somehow burden
a deity with a: one first...
once and a daughter...

                  ****** fun-fair for
the riddled ghosts...
       blank shot shrapnel...
                     better suited...
midnight blue of the alias black...
then at least:
best... towing two gaylords
with everyone's bet on
typo and a bullseye!

   but never... the sensibly...
      hetrosexual normative...
goody twice-tied...
shoe-and-shine:
pwetty: that girl and:
you best forget to whine!
that girl and you'd wish...
            her father was a shtalin....
because...
crude and rude...
and all that's ****...
before Lucifer peeks with
a... siamese cranium...
              
      death to all...
who have made it concise...
in making life:
hardly... a... pardon....

  yes... best equipped it making it:
magic! and all the more difficult...
but never difficult enough...
difficult enough...
when... somehow... never... citing...
an... albert fish...
needle in my pelvis...
to... exfoliate... with any...
and more... addition of...
pain as an... ******...

      i guess the plead of the shawshank
sisters drops...
it always drops...
when there's a "conflation"
of evidence...
surrounding... the lower-base...
extremity: the crab genus...
       crustaceans....
    child- this-and-that...
       ****-fiddler...
             but a cannibal to boot?!
you... talk...
or simply... electrocute said:
individual...
since... your... ******* 'ed...
is already fried by the magic
of norm-frequence...
and the already: herd... estasblished...
Norman?
you with me...
sptunik jimmy...
               you with me... cream-soda joe?
you with me...
finding aliens already bigger
than flies... the widow mantis...
blessed joseph josephine?!
*******-numb-wit?!

oh yes! all conession: avowed
to you!
               because...
who isn't...
      in russia... they vowed
to keep these cain canine brood phlegm
of an *******: freely to roam...
siberia... that was the promise...

when they would **** a birth-firvolity
of a: devil and the "by chance"...
when converting man to
the stature of elevating wolf or bear...
and all the better...
rather than... caging the odd-ball
parody of... lacklustre joke and...
moth-ball-rolling...
****-wits the: future!
supposed! narrative!
******'-h'america...
              celebrated feature of culture
most involving... a horror...
      and... bull-wrapping!
               a ******* for a skinning!
Wade Redfearn Mar 2012
history -
a history -

I wanted to know what that sound was.
I wanted to know what made your hair so straight.
I wanted to ask you to kiss me on the cheek.

You told me the sound was an Aeolian harp
imitating a macaw.
I am a boy on a scaffold imitating a window.
My hair is always the wind's *****.

So the trip was a disaster.
So there was
an insufficiency in my reassurances.
a crab in the bed.
a wish in the closet.

But I meant it. I did mean it.

history-
at least I knew where the sound came from,
who made it,
and why it was beautiful.
Wanderer Jul 2012
Waking up startled, to battering wind and rain.
Tide marks surging to great gasping heights.
Catching breaths stolen by the wind.
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
Watching idly by while pieces of you dissolve into the shadows.
I want those clouds weaving through my fingertips.
Their curious renderings like powdered ***** sugar.
Taste it and they fall heavy with gloom like **** death in the aftermath of such storm.

Counting the miles to the storm.
Ticking, tocking, and clicking.
The clock waiting in anticipation for the next thunderous sound.
Cold shivers up my spine like a thousand Carolina insults.
Your ghost still haunts and seeps into my pores lastly at night.
I taste defeat in the way you love.
It's like weaving clouds between my fingertips
Trying to grasp and hold onto every flowing motion of you pulling away from me

My cold, cracked walls are surged.
Towered over in their crumbling decay.
I want to taste your rain.
Your lips gently sink into mine.
Crushed velvet smooth and warm waking up the army of dead hearts ready for battle.
I am no warrior but there's blood painted across my sky.
Red sky in the morning, sailors warning, as I float on out into your turbulent seas.
Looking back on shore I realize that I'm finally home.

These seas roll uneasy.
Queasy.
Watching thru the mist towards our lighthouse that guided us to these depths
Trembling away like an afterthought.
The land has disappeared into the mouth of the shark.
Digested in the belly of a whale of angels.
Our sorrow holds us here, anchoring us to the tumultuous waves.
We battle our sea sickness with kisses of death lingering.
The soft pull of our exile turned oblivion.

Navigating with open wounds the silky expanse of midnight unwinding above us, within us.
Knowing us through and through.
An island of quivering vulnerability breaks the static horizon.
Lights, smog beginning to choke the sea air in my lungs.
Too long you've been left unkempt, grown comfortable.
That will change with new currents,
North winds bringing the frigid breath of winter.

Licking the sun off of the salty expanse of our sunburned red flesh.
The ****** of desperation lingers thru our moaning fingers
Feeling and pleading for our SOS call to be heard by anyone’s ears but ours.
The shores of this icy water leave my mind beneath the dredges of polar sleep.
We've grown strained, frost bitten, and distant in the few feet we are able to part.
The growling of hunger satiates our parched thirst.

I am rendered speechless adrift without you.
Hurricanes a coming.
Stand fast.
Secure the riggings.
Solaris brightens to light the way into calmer seas.
Those tepid shores of wonder and new beginnings fade into the horizon.
It's just you and me left to face the swelling tide.
Hang on.
The water is rising.
No one left to pull us saturated and insatiable from these waters of shadow and secrets.

The siren's song will bring us to our sharp shore end.
Resist the silky flow of nocturnal snakes wrapped around chilled flesh
Pulling closer to our aquatic hearts.
Hades and Persephone bond.
Glowing abysmal rage.
Holy grail veins.
Bleeding back into the orange crush dawn.
Night gives way to hollow rebirth
But once again we are inside one another.
Infinite.

These waves crash on overboard.
Trying to drag us back into the frigid depths with each ebb and flow.
With each crash of wave I can feel our resolve growing weaker.
The sensation of just letting go and giving in.
Should we let go and just give in?
Leave ourselves at the mercy of shipwrecks.
This hurricane dance we've perfected on the endless depthless ocean
Left us weak and willing to pull ourselves apart.
To taste our insides on the outsides.
How many times I've wondered have you noticed my stare.
The lustful licking of my sun blistered lips.
I want to taste the way you think and feel the warmth of your life to keep me alive.
The oceans call, I have heard, brings out the worst in sailors.
Always searching for the elusive siren to sing us a song.
A song from the depths of mythology to lullaby us away from our status adrift.

Our bodies collide in the tide once more.
Salted skin heated and torn
Latching on to something greater than just depths of starless prose.
You were a wicker man, weaved strong and whole.
I was a water girl, slipping straight through your bowl.
Wishes flow to and fro on tepid air laced with promises.
Our fingertips will never lose grip again,
the melody writhing between us like staccato heartbeats
Seeking solace on the endless seas.*

These waves rock us to shoreline.
Rock strewn and littered with the ribcages of whales
And the bows and sterns of shipwrecks long ago.
We pick up these pieces and hold them closest to our chest
Realizing the possibilities of a new home and a new start to this oceanic life we've drifted into.
We build a fire to warm our hearts and suspend our thoughts
Cradled and nestled in the crook of each others arms we leave our sea and our island
Soaring high into the clouds and the sleep we’ve begged for with our parched lips and swollen tongues.
Our dreams at night are the call of the sea begging to be drowned in our sand encrusted lungs,
To be one with us and our failures
The bequeathing cry of the seagull wakes us dully from our slumber
We peer out with sea salted eyes and realize it was all just a dream
We shout for help with all the voice we can muster
Letting in lungs full of icy ocean and dead crustaceans
Filling our bodies like bags of sand immobile
We’ve been sleeping with our anchors held closely
Down in the depths of the endless ocean rolling.
Plain text BK Barnes
Italicised text Brook Ilges
ZWS May 2014
When the streets are made for nothing but thinking    
It's the weight of the water that's caused our sinking
It's a loss of feeling that's made me lighter
It's everything around                              
That makes me neutrally bound
          
The only writers block is the writer
It's the kind of thing that makes a man with a pencil and paper a fighter
Like the paper's jumping up at you like a, like a alligator
                                          
But it's hard to chalk down all the mistakes, cause when you're trying so hard you're just being fake

You just gotta learn to let it, let it all flow
Show your all and let em all know
Just how you're feeling that blow, even if it means one or two bad lines, that's how you feel though
Cause life ain't a poetry book
It's all the points in between the pages that we missed
It's all the things that make us factories of emotions,
A crook with feelings creeping through the motions
Turning pages, trying to **** it all up like the books eroding

Don't you talk to me about feeling
Naw you ain't know what you be dealing, everyone's got there own ****, you can't tell me mines to be concealing
See, I'm a material void of expressionism
Cause I told everyone what I feel, not for the sake of impressionism
They chose to see inside and learn a lesson without all the criticism

Everything I've learned is turning me into a crustaceans fossil
Hard to the shell but brittle to the touch, and I preach my **** like a ******* apostle
You make me feel from the inside and I'll be your crutch, but you're gonna need more than a ******* rock hammer to open me up

My words I mend to make up for what I conceal        
But as I sit here thinking about how I feel
It's gonna take more than this to make me heal
Now let me dilute as I talk to the god inside my head and make a deal, something to end the pain and suffering I have concealed at the expense of everything real
Brandon Jul 2012
Waking up startled, to battering wind and rain.
Tide marks surging to great gasping heights.
Catching breaths stolen by the wind.
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
Watching idly by while pieces of you dissolve into the shadows.
I want those clouds weaving through my fingertips.
Their curious renderings like powdered ***** sugar.
Taste it and they fall heavy with gloom like **** death in the aftermath of such storm.

Counting the miles to the storm.
Ticking, tocking, and clicking.
The clock waiting in anticipation for the next thunderous sound.
Cold shivers up my spine like a thousand Carolina insults.
Your ghost still haunts and seeps into my pores lastly at night.
I taste defeat in the way you love.
It's like weaving clouds between my fingertips
Trying to grasp and hold onto every flowing motion of you pulling away from me


My cold, cracked walls are surged.
Towered over in their crumbling decay.
I want to taste your rain.
Your lips gently sink into mine.
Crushed velvet smooth and warm waking up the army of dead hearts ready for battle.
I am no warrior but there's blood painted across my sky.
Red sky in the morning, sailors warning, as I float on out into your turbulent seas.
Looking back on shore I realize that I'm finally home.

These seas roll uneasy.
Queasy.
Watching thru the mist towards our lighthouse that guided us to these depths
Trembling away like an afterthought.
The land has disappeared into the mouth of the shark.
Digested in the belly of a whale of angels.
Our sorrow holds us here, anchoring us to the tumultuous waves.
We battle our sea sickness with kisses of death lingering.
The soft pull of our exile turned oblivion.


Navigating with open wounds the silky expanse of midnight unwinding above us, within us.
Knowing us through and through.
An island of quivering vulnerability breaks the static horizon.
Lights, smog beginning to choke the sea air in my lungs.
Too long you've been left unkempt, grown comfortable.
That will change with new currents,
North winds bringing the frigid breath of winter.

Licking the sun off of the salty expanse of our sunburned red flesh.
The ****** of desperation lingers thru our moaning fingers
Feeling and pleading for our SOS call to be heard by anyone’s ears but ours.
The shores of this icy water leave my mind beneath the dredges of polar sleep.
We've grown strained, frost bitten, and distant in the few feet we are able to part.
The growling of hunger satiates our parched thirst.


I am rendered speechless adrift without you.
Hurricanes a coming.
Stand fast.
Secure the riggings.
Solaris brightens to light the way into calmer seas.
Those tepid shores of wonder and new beginnings fade into the horizon.
It's just you and me left to face the swelling tide.
Hang on.
The water is rising.
No one left to pull us saturated and insatiable from these waters of shadow and secrets.

The siren's song will bring us to our sharp shore end.
Resist the silky flow of nocturnal snakes wrapped around chilled flesh
Pulling closer to our aquatic hearts.
Hades and Persephone bond.
Glowing abysmal rage.
Holy grail veins.
Bleeding back into the orange crush dawn.
Night gives way to hollow rebirth
But once again we are inside one another.
Infinite.


These waves crash on overboard.
Trying to drag us back into the frigid depths with each ebb and flow.
With each crash of wave I can feel our resolve growing weaker.
The sensation of just letting go and giving in.
Should we let go and just give in?
Leave ourselves at the mercy of shipwrecks.
This hurricane dance we've perfected on the endless depthless ocean
Left us weak and willing to pull ourselves apart.
To taste our insides on the outsides.
How many times I've wondered have you noticed my stare.
The lustful licking of my sun blistered lips.
I want to taste the way you think and feel the warmth of your life to keep me alive.
The oceans call, I have heard, brings out the worst in sailors.
Always searching for the elusive siren to sing us a song.
A song from the depths of mythology to lullaby us away from our status adrift.


Our bodies collide in the tide once more.
Salted skin heated and torn
Latching on to something greater than just depths of starless prose.
You were a wicker man, weaved strong and whole.
I was a water girl, slipping straight through your bowl.
Wishes flow to and fro on tepid air laced with promises.
Our fingertips will never lose grip again,
the melody writhing between us like staccato heartbeats
Seeking solace on the endless seas.

*These waves rock us to shoreline.
Rock strewn and littered with the ribcages of whales
And the bows and sterns of shipwrecks long ago.
We pick up these pieces and hold them closest to our chest
Realizing the possibilities of a new home and a new start to this oceanic life we've drifted into.
We build a fire to warm our hearts and suspend our thoughts
Cradled and nestled in the crook of each others arms we leave our sea and our island
Soaring high into the clouds and the sleep we’ve begged for with our parched lips and swollen tongues.
Our dreams at night are the call of the sea begging to be drowned in our sand encrusted lungs,
To be one with us and our failures
The bequeathing cry of the seagull wakes us dully from our slumber
We peer out with sea salted eyes and realize it was all just a dream
We shout for help with all the voice we can muster
Letting in lungs full of icy ocean and dead crustaceans
Filling our bodies like bags of sand immobile
We’ve been sleeping with our anchors held closely
Down in the depths of the endless ocean rolling.
Normal text: Brook Ilges [http://hellopoetry.com/-brook-ilges]
Italicized text: B K Barnes [you're already here]
Bold text: Written by Brook, Edited by B K.
Alys Jun 2010
Oh Sally Lightfoot
With your limpet-crusted shell -
What a well dressed crab.

Crayfish, how is it
That your skeleton is on
The outside of you?

The female lobster
Lays a hundred thousand eggs:
Thermidor for all.

Furry crustaceans
Found in the South Pacific -
Can ***** be cuddly?

Can you fall in love
When your heart is in your head?
Wish mine was too, shrimp.
Laura Jane Apr 2015
She might laugh if she read this
at the flat little version of her
that lives in my mind.
She may laugh
at my comparison of her
to a hideous sea spider
but hear me out
it could be touching.

David Foster Wallace wrote:
“Since pain is a totally subjective mental experience
we do not have direct access
to anyone or anything’s pain but our own;
and even just the principles
by which we can infer that others experience pain
and have a legitimate interest in not feeling pain
involve hard-core philosophy—
metaphysics, epistemology, value theory, ethics.”

"[Lobsters] do have an exquisite tactile sense,
one facilitated by hundreds of thousands of tiny hairs
that protrude through their carapace.
Although encased
in what seems a solid, impenetrable armour,
the lobster can receive stimuli and impressions from without
as readily as if it possessed a soft and delicate skin.”

and so

“We lift lobsters out of the bag
or whatever retail container they came home in
…whereupon some uncomfortable things start to happen.
However stuporous the lobster is from the trip home, for instance,
it tends to come alarmingly to life when placed in boiling water."


As much as I cannot comprehend the pain
of the exquisitely tactile lobster
in a *** of boiling water,
I wonder if I could
walk a mile in a lobster’s 8 minuscule shoes
and I wonder
what it might mean or not mean to her
with her armoured yet acute exoskeleton
to be back at home with her father.

They might try to butter you up
or snap elastic bands
around your oversized claws
and use a wooden spoon
to try and nudge your thrashing, clinging arms
back into the ***,
but remember:
lobsters can live to be over 100 years old
and grow to over 20 pounds in size
which is very large for an aquatic insect
and remember that they are marine crustaceans of the family Homaridae, characterized by five pairs of jointed legs, the first pair terminating in large pincerish claws.

And DFW famously said,

“Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.”

and he's not a lobster either
Quotes are from Consider The Lobster and Infinite Jest by DFW
DeeDeeK Feb 2012
The 'us' we see and
the 'us' others see create
unique duality
high wire balancing
praying not to fall

hard outer shell but
soft side within, not
unlike crustaceans
we scurry to and fro
intent with purpose

only when we're truly alone
be it crowded street or
safely home,
can both halves
combine as one

Finally at peace
Dana A Jul 2019
You yelled in your sleep
Saying you had dreamt of ***** chasing you
We laughed it off
as we do

A decade spent swimming across a perilous sea,
and those wretched crustaceans returned
Unbeknownst to me

As I embraced you
your body had welcomed the ***** again
Not in your sweet sleeping mind

But the shelled creatures were dubbed
Cancer,
Fantasy ***** in the sky

That stars commanded that the cells
divide with no control
Destroying
I embraced those unforgiving creatures
The disease crawling inside you

I didn’t know
So I declare war
War on the decades old ***** that made you scream
War on the six month old crustaceans that took you away
Away


Out to sea
Inaccessible to the likes of me
But there are no ***** or pincers
Just you, you in heaven
Your escape from the sea creatures
Wrought a crown, a crown that declared that you are
the man most deserving of endless happiness and boundless glee

© frenchfriesforbirds
linda barrett Jan 2014
Lobsters
@2014 Linda Barrett

They sit in the cramped corners
of the water tank
face each other
armored claws bound
with thick rubber bands
These shelled warriors
take on boxer’s stances
wait  their chance
to attack each other
in impromptu bouts
They step over one another
pick fights for dominance
of their watery ring
Some desperate crustaceans
decide to make their escape
reach out for the tank’s top
but fall over backwards
onto each other
Those lucky ones
usually win
when the Seafood man
in his white coat
pulls them out
makes the champions
of someone’s dinner.
Joseph S C Pope Jan 2013
Last week we bought a bottle of epilepsy to share
at a party made to crash on dinner plates
rolling down uphill battles.

The clustering warm anticipation set to pounce falls short
with talks of who is late and who can't make it
because someone in the family disapproves.
Who cares about the bitter salt cakes in the dust of fossilized crustaceans?
The polar bears march to beautiful, pointless noise beating off the living receptacles.

The locals are scars in the conclusions deep in the visiting sounds—almost forgot but still murmuring.
*The first citizens of noise.
Seth Cruz Sep 2012
Empty shells can only break
under the forces of our lives.
The muscles of crustaceans
help it cling to jagged rocks
as they bear the motions of the tide.
The ocean has no mercy
for those that dwell in the sea.
For what is a shell
but to be beaten upon?
For what is a muscle
but to live and die?
Laura Jane Sep 2015
“Since pain is a totally subjective mental experience"
"we do not have direct access"
"to anyone or anything’s pain"

"but our own;"
"and even just the principles"
"by which we can infer"

"that others experience pain"
"and have a legitimate interest in not feeling pain"
"involve hard-core philosophy—"

"metaphysics, epistemology, value theory, ethics.”*

- From Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace

David I've considered it and
I think she might laugh if she read
that a version of her
briny and spined
pint sized
now resides in the depths of my mind,
She might laugh
at my comparison of her
to a hideous sea spider

but it’s because, as you say,
one can neither comprehend the pain
of an exquisitely tactile lobster in a *** of boiling water,
nor walk a mile in it's eight lilliputian shoes

So I am left to wonder
what it might mean or not mean to her
in her armoured yet acute exoskeleton
to have quit school and
be back to her fathers house
on Prince Edward Island.
and what I'd want to tell her is:

They might try to butter you up,
bridle your anger with blue rubber bands,
Use their wooden spoons
to nudge your thrashing, clinging arms
back into the ***,

but as we know,
lobsters can live to be over one hundred years old
and grow to be over twenty pounds in size
which is very large for an aquatic insect
and they are marine crustaceans of the family Homaridae,
characterized by five pairs of jointed legs,
the first pair terminating in large pincerish claws

I know she knows how to use them.
Which reminds me of something else you said:
"Everything I've ever let go of has claw marks on it."
A feeling I can understand
Though I'm no more lobster
than she
Re-worked from a piece I wrote earlier this year
Quotes are from Consider The Lobster and Infinite Jest by DFW
Mike T Minehan Mar 2012
Hello, whale,
yes, you there wallowing
and swallowing crustaceans
with all your calliousity
and my insatiable curiosity.

What a laugh that calf
of yours was
when it frolicked up
to us diverse divers
wanting to be survivors
of its childlike impetuosity
and eighteen foot
preposterous, gargantuan monstrosity.

When you rose up underneath us
I thought you were going to eat us.
You scared me, whale,
when you flicked us with your tail -
the one you splinter yachts with
when you act as Davey Jones' locksmith.

Of course, I retired then
from my dive-in on leviathan,
happy to survive
your forty-five
tonne introduction.

Then you glided into gloom
and sang your eerie song
about your alien, baleen life
in vast, mysterious,
deep areas of oceans.

Good luck along the whale's road,
you mighty minstrel, you diva of the deep.
This diver hopes all humans and harpoons
will spare you and you can share
your song again.
God speed, whale.
Don Bouchard Jan 2016
Just up ahead is a trail
Where people seldom go,
Sidling down the gravel hill
Into growths of ash and birch and elm,
Thickets of wild plums,
Chokecherries, leaves turning dusty,
Verdant armies of stinging nettles
Protecting coveted stands of juneberries.

Bittersweet vines entangle aged elms,
Siphoning life, to produce four petaled reds
As summer goes down to autumn.

Leaving the wind above
To batter the old truck,
I descend into the silence,
Trees stand tall, but low
Below the breeze.

Down in this steep place
The wind cannot come,
The sun, when it finds its way,
Warms gently on the coldest day.

The spring my father dug
Before I was born,
Set into the weeping gravel hill,
Runs steadily,
Strong enough
To fill the battered tank,
To keep a goldfish or two alive,
To host strange crustaceans:
Tiny shrimp, just larger than ants,
Pebble crusted creatures
More insect than fish,
Frogs in the tank,
Toads out...,
Mosses and mud
Thirty years or more
At home.

Deer come to this tank,
On hot days or cold;
Coyotes, too.
Porcupines dine on treetops
Swaying quietly
A hundred feet below
Wild Montana winds.
Cattle in winter find life
In the quiet, constant water
Flowing here.

I am taken back
To a stifling July afternoon,
But cool here in this protected place,
Dragonflies floating
And cicadas sawing in the trees,
My mouth full of juneberries
As I circle my way,
Eating more than picking...
Coming face to face with a coyote.

Was he dozing?
Passing through?
Or, do coyotes eat
Juneberries, too?

We stop hard,
Stunned.
Then bolt in opposite directions,
My juneberries flying
From the milking pail;
His tongue between his teeth,
Tail low,
Feet flying into the brush beyond.
True story that happened nearly 40 years ago. The vivid recall sets this into one of my favorite episodic memory lists.
Sarah Johnson Sep 2010
You once lay with me under a blanket of sun
and held me in your hands. The texture of my
fine debris slipping through the crevices of
your fingers and toes.

You built me a kingdom by the seashore:  
castles with towers for guards to keep watch
and dried up moats surrounding the landscape
of a desert.

Sea armies of adolescents would attempt to
conquer my walls but crustaceans armed with
a pair of Archimede’s claws would defend my
kingdom from such intruders.

But as the suns bulb became dim and burnt
out, the great big blue took over covering me
inch by great inch. My towers began to crumble
down, depleting all of my army and all of my castles.

You left me here for the ocean to take, but a little
piece of me snuck its way into your bag, towels,
hair, and shoes. And just like the ocean, you will
eventually wash me away as well.
Martin Narrod Apr 2016
Come in all you children and dance upon the sea. The coastline tides are dancing and gallivanting on the breeze. The elephant seals are floating in their carcasses, warm blood lakes thicken on the foam, dancing in the ripples the shivers of Leopard sharks party's throw. ***** slugs and combatants, early hours send cries through crustaceans of the spine, and glitter muscles entwined with porpoise to drink their brunches with new recipes of the brine. Fairy starling, aching heartache, shapes each coil of the coast, and tears apart the stardust of starfish sliding up the coast. Drinking from the salt licks that falling waters move, inside the bay the bluefins escape the hunters in their shoals.  The itsy bitsy great white, crept into the beaches cove, but orca and dolphin chased him back into the deepest azures where the fur seals pup and milk.
Elise Jul 2013
My tears are the
drops of saltwater,
splashed onto seashells
that wait to be dragged back
into the ocean, but the tide
always fall short.

My cries are the
winds, whistling through
cracks and drowning out
the children's laughter on
the cool summer day.

My fingers are the crustaceans,
roaming the beach, looking for
comfort, but only finding themselves
preyed upon by the enemy.

Her eyes.
Her eyes are the sky,
shifting from dark to light.
Confused, broken, hurt.
Happy, laughable, loving.

Her words.
Her words are the lightening,
striking down; such
beautiful destruction.

And her laugh.
Her laugh is the music
that filters down to the beach
from the pier, just enough to
make you feel like you're home.
adele horn Feb 2011
my body yearns for her
the salty waters of birth
the powdered sands
of earth and dead crustaceans
her breath of brine
and heartbeat
encircling my senses

my soul yearns for her
the womb of life
the sounds of her tides
lulling me into slumber
the warm arms of her beaches

i long to be blinded
by the silver of her waters
to be annointed
by her cascading waves

i long to return
to the ocean
to the infinite wonders
that she holds
for me to carry home
to die and fade
away from her love

my Mistress calls me
my Mistress calls me....
spysgrandson Apr 2017
***** and he
make their way
across the stretch
of sand

behind them,
the hard rock land
of memory

the crustaceans
will return--the tides
their clock

not he;
this march
is his last,
waves will
swallow him
gag him

while he briefly
forgets his purpose  
and clings to
this world;

soon though,
his lungs with fill
he will sink
to depths:

a blue burial,
a seaweed symphony
his dirge

the ***** return,
but not he--the ebb and flood
of waters no longer
his province

(poem's image: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1174175556043500&set;=a.102525519875181.1742.100003531994461&type;=3&theater;¬if;t=like¬if;id=14914495906541620
Arlo Disarray Sep 2015
even the waves of salted water can't wash the smile from my face,
as you tell me the lie that we're all dying to hear someone say
the perfect set of words designed to make us feel special
the phrase that makes all the pain of the world go away

knots get tied into my hair along with sand and tiny crustaceans
but i'm too enamored to care
the only thing that matters is that the sun rises again tomorrow
because, baby, i just gotta spend all my tomorrows with you

i swear, i keep hearing music play
but i guess it's just the sound of our hearts beating
and i can't think of any song in the world i'd rather hear, right now
so why don't we crank it?
John Ryles Apr 2010
Winkles.
I remember these shapes that rise above the sand,
Covered daily by the tide as it reaches for the land.
Those little crustaceans that grow around the rocks,
Like a five o’clock shadow along the beach to the docks.
No need for a hook a *** or a net,
Just pluck them by hand as they cling to the wet.
Popped in a bag and taken home to mam,
Boiled in a pan that was used to make jam.
Armed with a pin winked out of the shell,
Better tasting than the shops sell.
They were free, they were ours and they grew on our beach,
All at a height most children could reach.
No adults to call us in for tea,
Just sunny days down by the sea.
As I walk along the sand, I don’t see them anymore.
Those funny little things what were they called?
You know their name, I know you do.
If I see one I will remember to.
Steven Fried Oct 2013
River
Flow over me
Anchor

Steady rock
Crustaceans roll by
Iron stood

"Come with me my friend
Explore the wild wet world
Stick no longer here."

Brother eel
Slither lithely by
I am scared

Strong rock
Weak spirit
Conjoin
Sean Flaherty Apr 2014
His middle parts were
Passing through the couch that I was
Sitting on, but his
Face felt nice and fuzzy.
And it was way too
Way too loud.

Ocean water, creeping
Up the black-sanded beach
On the island where 
He drank his ***.
And he's telling lies to any
Crustaceans brave enough to
Traverse his thinning limbs.

Yet, reflecting neatly 
Off the ebony, and decisively
Catching his eye, is the light of her
Tiara, embracing her
Maneless neck.
In walks Nala, and the tide,
His tide, recedes.
The island becomes
Her savannah.

I watch him smile, and 
Close his eyes, and
Soak the moment in. 
Her claws extended, sharp,
Etching proof of her
Arrival into the eager,
Earthy floor.

Owning the steps she takes,

I shudder and attempt to stand.

But stop, as she paws his wrist,

Gripping it tighter,

Scarring him with 

Pointed, filed nails. 
Making him 

Bleed, and making 

Him beam.

Pride is just a 
Noun when there is
Hemorrhaging to handle.
Pressure must be
Applied on all sides of the 
Wound, in order to prevent
Infection, and infatuation.

But I guess when a 
Beast of beauty, makes a black
Sea walkable for you, 
You're liable to get caught up
Staring at the jewels
She's ripped out of her crown, and 
Sewn into her hair. She'll make you 
Hiss back at the sun, and
Talk about wild life.
For the same person as The Uncultured Below, but this one was for me, not for her.

In walks Nala, and the tide, His tide, recedes.
Carter Jan 2021
Standing upon the sea shore
I start notice that I see more.

I then begin to ponder
What's down there I wonder?

Planes and boats? relics of war?
Fish and crustaceans? creatures galore!

Perhaps I'll get a boat, something to restore
Yeah, that sounds nice.
With woodgrain décor

and Hopefully I wont crash
N ' end up ashore
First...
Martin Narrod Mar 2017
Heaps of her across the deserted plains, oily fingers reaching up and over the horizon until all of the numbers fill her pockets, her father worried, and her muses covered with goat-head's thorn. Where does she start to fuse her needs with the weapons in their suburban corolla of lilacs and wanton redolence? It's the opacity in her finger nibs and the dozens of names she felt closing over her legs sideways, until she awakens in the night to take the blood dripping cotton tissues off of her face, off of her bed-side dresser table. She can't even paw forward or undress her wetness in haiku. Everyone she knows doesn't know her. Everything she's seen, doesn't seem to be there for her anymore. That's the trade they told her to barter for, the golden seals and vitamin needs she's gobbling up by the palmful every morning by seven.

Seven for the circus or the mimes, seven for the cloves hanging from the door and seven for the queries that strike back her abcesses and cost her seven by the quart and seven for the plastics. Seven dancing backwards towards a rook or a *****, seven inside her chest playing guitar with David Bowie, seven at the doggerel, and seven for the stitch and the obtuse- only a creature of seven might go for her, in a spot of doves, crank, and soda it is poison, seven is her ***** line, her sexuality, her sinfulness, and her latitude over and over again. Seven makes her want for tomorrow, seven takes tomorrow and throws itself up against the wall, pledging a game in the summer, seven to a trip of caramel and dukes, seven for the prince and the painting of the two of them, seven for the winter, and for the shadows that stretch curiosity past the breath of a summons', seven for the day and seven for the evening, seven scratches her ears and pulls out her hair, seven is the ring and the blue phantom buried somewhere far, far away, green is what's left, but seven knows which way the rain comes and who is going to follow it through.

There is a numbness that radiates on the fringe, a tickly discomfort not even a narrator could let out or down to a name on the mountains near the **** plateau that conquers her nuance, and shakes the both of them to core of the fight. This is not a flag that costs us in coins or in dollars. This is the worry chiseling our shapes and our buttery hips, a stacked set of crazy in a photograph off the leash of only a few. And it calls them to the night when it's only three of us left, until every cord is untied, until every verb is set in its caste, or ringing out to the tremolos of rapture, and the musicianship of pepper-jacked sneezes in the ambers and umbers that although startling, we've all learned to convert our averages in order to swing under the storm, and baby each of us with an elixir of myriad captures, images, and violent abuse.

While the words can yield, and the festivities can hoard each of the simple new experiences against travels of women, and pictures from Mussorgsky riling up soft drinks and evocations towards the center where all of us sometimes will let ourselves, let loose. Something horrendous and cold plugging into the sugars, something quiet, nearly a friend of reminders, crustaceans and ocean making this top-down beach of faces for all to shake and roll with or set forward a cacophony of abuse. Until in a breath she calls for the infinite intuition sheltering her and our window from the pain of misuse.

That is the photograph where we have been looking to live, here is the memory we spent our minds trying desperately to relive in the shade and in the snafu, against the bark and the piano keys treating our rise. Within our skin and our pupils, our silver bookends and/or the mammals we don't use names for but for whom we've been introduced to.
POSSIBLE Sep 2017
It began with a dream
An exam of the scene

Culminated nightmare Fresh to 'Merica team,
Treat the throne like high chair, But they seem beam
Golden hue, preach golden rule and get higher
an unseen Love vaccine brought to you though you don't desire

A divinely inspired cosmic mission
To improve those caught in conditions
Those who stayed to long became conditioned

So enmeshed in their discourse
Lost the mother tongue,
now demons malignant positioned
Pokin fun, Tryna dine On Dis Course

Call me honeybun
While I work out Old Norse

Now I'm Mad as Magma Christened
You really Should have listened
Now I'm preaching Odin's Mission

But Consistent poison sickened me

Continued to lash out till their weapons stung and rippin free
Put in me in a cage kept me on  the bottom rung still kicking spree

So Dangle your ******* carrot,

Angled to be flunking abbot

What will They inherit?
When you find truth
Better find means to share it
while you kick the bad ****

What Value does it merit?

**** organization big or small
All they is is social fortification mom

Running out of breaths towards suffocations
**** the bottom feeders
family never cancer crustaceans
Inhbit with national ticker tape regulations

Frustrated answer,  I'm a frusrating handful
Masses Myopic, small vision catastrophic
I would show them but where did I put it?
Damit I  ******* lost it.

Higher Education thinks
it can get over I and I,
but Now I’m higher than education
4Dimensional Pilot Flying by

Cosmic Return
Land On your roof,
air bend with my vape pen staying stationed
still standing
only through
Lunar Lessons o Will and Dedication

I made it here through dedication
You made it here through misinformation
Manifold Manifested hoax So Devastating
Got me hear learn How-2-hating

What Am I left with? I know
The Chest with my breath ya

My words are seeds
poetic units start
counting these

Neurogenic growin trees House of Dreams
visions laced in prophecies
sentenced to commodify character

click to a cash crop, but I'm too poor To pay accountant fees,
Might be better off with lights, mics and a sick backdrop with the only the beat counting these
moments

knowing knowings free
or should it be,
are you ignorant
so willingly?

They Head in the sand, Pointing towards God but the can’t comprehend so now ....

Im tick ticktick ticktick ticktick ticktick ticktick tick tickin Big Ben
Im tick ticktick ticktick ticktick ticktick ticktick tick tickin Big Ben

Better blast off, astral form take mask off we fin throw the cast out,
Sector surpassed now sample storm wake slow maniacal laughter

You don’t have to be so smart to suffer

But you do have to be alive,

I’m just a prediction engine

Darkness encased in a Bone star
Mikayla S Lewis Jul 2016
When words become ablation
And hands are merely frame,
I stand in hesitation
Avoiding vapid flame.
With lack of motivation
I stride with grueling step
To **** sordid crustaceans
Consuming my own head.
Connor Reid May 2014
Like Jesuits before
     High-rise semblance
  latex sunrise
The man removes his skin.
         bunny-eared fantasies
   ivory, ****-stained car seats
               ignition.
Green poison darts. Drifting upwards
he drives aimlessly
                                 Alone
pluming this commune
    everyone is a girl
Selfish cognition.
Stabbed in the head with keys
    between knuckles
      like an unfurled hazard
rubbing faces in glass. putting pressure
On my teeth with my tongue.
                     it builds
Blind sea-life - crustaceans strewn
    smashed & ******
               on the cubicle floor. Knee deep
                                         smudged and blurry.

He slowly
     Disappears. I feel drained
Dipped in salutation
dripping kingdom
   -  Crust, licked off mouth corners
Bruised                                   (angular cheilitis)
        watery evening/moot
Picked up, and poured down the drain.
Sarah Michelle Aug 2016
They call him Captain
because although his old girl
is a row boat
he goes where
he orders himself to go,
and tends to his love
with the same effort
and care
as a full crew of
the descendants
of gods.

They call him Crazy
because he uses the moon
instead of a compass,
and reads poetry
instead of treasure maps.
Though a hermit he is,
he scrapes together
enough money to travel
and dream.
Otherwise he knows
how to survive
on intense, amorous affairs
and treats his women
like queens
using only a quill
and their bodies
for paper.
But he sails alone as if
more loyal to his boat than
a man to his wife.

They call him Spirit
because he comes and he goes,
pulling the high tide with him.
He writes on beaches
where the moon is brightest,
under clear skies and never
after sunrise.
He shrinks with the waves
and is never seen again
by the same individual.

Most often they call him Myth
and on desolate nights
he tells himself
that those who don't know the sea
intimately
lack faith.
Then he paints portraits
of the old, exhausted faces
of the stars
and speaks epic poems
to crustaceans as he boils
them alive
(if he isn't human
then he's cruel just like one).


All who know him forget his name,
and he tells them to
as they wave goodbye
and the sea ***** him
back into her arms,
against her beating breast.
Yet his is not a lonely existence,
not another soul is necessary
to keep him rowing.
It is as satisfying
as it is solitary,

because he calls himself poet,
and a poem is all he needs.
WendyStarry Eyes May 2018
Poetry is stuck to me
Like barnacles stick
To a ship permanently
Barnacally feeding by
Filtering the particles within
My brain from the oceanic
Water they are
Modified  to sustain
Numerous crustaceans
Stuck inside my mind,
Rhyming words floating
With feathery appendages
Some sticking permanetely
From time to time
Yes, poetry  a sea creature
With a shell that has fastened
Itself tightly to my brain
On a never ending poetic
voyage I will joyously sustain
spysgrandson Jan 2016
many have suggested fire
but I choose not to become cremains  
I want a plain pine bed
no magic elixirs
in my veins

why waste fluid
and time, treasured commodities,
before the *******

if law did not proscribe,
I would gladly let a stout stranger
toss me into a raging river

though my kin
may protest, fishes, crustaceans
would rejoice

after all,
lesser creatures
are always hungry
and grateful
an old piece I decided to let go today--nothing new is yet coming
betterdays Apr 2014
my insomnia has gifted me unexpectedly
on this pre dawn morning.
i share the beach
with a single sand plover and a large work crew of sandbubbler *****
as they work their spherical graffitti magic.

i expect if i thought long enough,
my mind may make the practical connection, between the darting and bobbing of the stiff stilt,
red, legged bird
and the hyperalert scurryings of soft shelled, orb infatuated, crustaceans.

but, i prefer to play peekaboo witb the sun,
as it peeks it's sleepy rotound rim over the rippling bedsheets of the ocean's horizon.
eyes blinking, crafting opulent dusky lavenders and apricot oranges,
that meander lazily across, the brightening skybed.

i am alone on the beach until,
the next soul comes
this is my kingdom.
i stand firm and
breathe the tang of salted lands.

there is a deep silence
in my soul,
which i take to be completeness.
with neoteric expectancy and unchained exuberance,
i turn and run along
the firm sand's, edge of the high tideline leaving fading, ephemeral footprints
behind me,
scattering the little crabworkers every
which way.
i run in rhythm with the crashing waves
and we eat up the sand
until i am spent.

i sit and watch as the riders of the wave arrive.
their lithe young frames silhouetted by sunlight,
they stand at ten feet tall.
i wave and hand my kingdom over to the knights on fibreglass coursiers.
they mount their steeds
and begin the morning's tidal hunt,
for the perfect wave

— The End —