The veil lifted
from the mechanical slaughter
of the coastal engineers.
Waves crash in that soft,
whispering hiss. The sound that
is usually betrayed, contorted,
through terabytes of purchased bliss,
of a meditation wrought in sickness.
Freed of employment ties,
I stand at Earth's compromise.
Wavering boundaries broken,
conquered, and regained once more.
Cyclical, cynical, tempered battle.
War-torn property rolls in the throes
of the Moon, endless, gentle
discrepancies between land and sea.
I dip my hand in the brine. Long
written of, rarely encountered
in my daydream, salt unreal on the tongue,
only when spoken.
This roar, the old marginal sea,
it obliterates the pneumatic sounds of the
yellow-coated henchmen of progression.
Slaves, breaking backs to build roads
for the already-fallen pyramids,
already stolen marble coat and golden
spinning top,
we've dug it all out.
And the lighthouse winks. It winks
through the fast shadow of January's afternoon.
No land at the horizon, instead a sheet
of hostile, infertile water, and clouds
to stifle my lungs.
Oh, lighthouse; my childhood's end,
now but a lack of time taken to notice
you. You spindle-spin the light, powerful beacon.
You roll back the decades,
to times of ships and books;
of journeys born and placed
over profit's end.
This journey, this journey now so brief,
once dug by many, once an undertaking,
now one quiet train ride away.
Like a prophet, I strive. I strive
to notice Earth's balm,
the Mother and protector,
of all terrestrial innocence.
Bind me not in gravity, nor in debt.
Instead, let me scale the North Sea's
surface. To join the glamour of the
fairy-lit, tough Norwegian liners,
grey like Scottish shores.
Boundless power, opulent force
in a decaying town. City street lights
stretch up to bring the folk under the
dentistry light.
The groynes will hold this beach
like a girdle, as a holster of sand,
a harness for erosion, whilst the
traffic sounds signal lack of footfall;
mounted failure.
But, for evermore, the waves sing to us.
They sing the truth: that they will remain
long since our passing, long since the stench
of fumes; long since we've given up
on the fall.
With this and lightened body, brought
to betterment through cannabis and
Astral Selves, I turn to my life
and remember it well, as a fraction
of the entire self.
Kiss blown to darkened waters,
the paternal, cooing waves and whispers
of ancient whale, I turn back to the sand dunes
and hardy grassland.
A hotel stands at a distance,
privileged guests with fluorescent luggage,
and half-filled parking spaces,
whilst the Romans still stand in ruin.
That lighthouse weeps its goodbyes,
the sand drags me back in my prints,
knowing me, identifying me – careful police.
They sing, “Oh former tenant, Northern heat,
gentle visitor, help us cleanse your feet!”
Clumsily, I stagger back to my lifetime's
worth of worries. Back to the conglomerate
of blackened, distorted figures, sculptured
rain-soaked children, standing with feet
indiscernible from the globe beneath,
locked out of motion.
To them, I understand their isolation,
their helpless gravity in a heavy world.
To them, I return to artificial light,
where will suffers, where lungs heave,
but for all this I am glad,
of the sweet ocean-side reprieve.