There is a wire tap inside his mind
which pulls the waves in and over
the shore, fast. It floods
the earth and leaves his skin
pale and waterlogged, blue from the cold
and bloated with decay.
When the wall of water hits and the screams
of many tired, sad people can be heard,
the sinking city of Venice will crumble
away into the sea, leaving jagged,
splintered rock jutting from the ocean
like strange stone blades. In the silence
of receding water, I hear the cries
of a newly orphaned child and see
a small silhouette standing over the body
of his father, satellites still speaking
to the microphones in his dead brain.
The tide laps at his splayed limbs
and the water pulls him back
towards the ocean while the boy screams,
wailing as he clutches the cold, limp hands
and begs his father with tears and fury
to come back to him.

On impact, he screams his empty, chilling
scream and cries as his gritty exterior
is washed away by the icy shoreline.
The water seeps in through the cracks
in his skin and burns as it touches
the many fires of hell which dance
so brightly behind the vivid
brown of his eyes. Skin so rich
it's like a painting, the deepest
greens and most intense blues
embedded within his surface. He
is molten with beauty and fear, his hands
laced with the pain of generations.
He was a man of lava and he thawed the lady
of ice, but he is being turned to stone
by the monster she became.

Why can't I sing like they do,
the way I'm supposed to?
There are a million melodies
trapped within me,
like golden dust of darkness
blazing with gilded sparks
in the depths of my bones.
I've had enough
of this wretched game,
where I follow the line
leading to the bullseye,
trailing steps bigger than mine
and falling into dusk
with nothing left in me.
It's time for me to open the doors,
for me to shine with a light
as bright as yours.
I can feel it in my chest
as it tries to force its way out,
craving the best
sounds I could make before,
when I was alone.
I need to sing like they do,
to sing like I'm supposed to.
I know within
that it's what I'm fated to do,
to consecrate this ground
with music only I can make.

As the waves separate and leave him standing
alone on his small rock
in the middle of the ocean,
he lets out a sigh of deep,
haunted sadness. The fractured earth
is sending harsh, jagged lines
of rending sound out
and into the open. Children play
on the line of the shore
and dance in the joyful waves
greeting their toes
as they push their feet
into the wet sand.
He watches the giant wave approach them,
the fear cloud their happy eyes,
their laughter instantly merge
into a harmony
of pure terror.
He watches them run,
pointlessly,
for the false safety
of their mothers' arms.
He shudders his cold,
rattling breath and waits
to see how long
it will take this time.

Somewhere in the deep ocean
there is a tremor, a shake,
the initiation of something
intensely destructive and cruel.
The waves move away from him in giant
ripples from where the underwater plates
crash and collide with his dark body,
sparking up and exploding
away from him, from each other.
He holds the earth together
until the shaking strain
corrupts his limbs
and he shudders, sending jagged
shockwaves through the earth
and into the inky water
surrounding him, out
towards the unexpecting land.

Have voice from between silence and authority,
so that reassuring quick compulsions as you destroy
and attack can last. None of the silent and empty men,
or boys, believe in living memory, only
in the evening dusk and foggy morning.
I thought about everyone else, kept away,
in my cold considering of the sun and night and helpless
sound. Away but in an awful time, back in circles,
lost as ever and wandering in a helpless way.
There was a stranger by the grass and I could see
his eyes, quick and cold and hard. I was seeing my senses -
sight, smell - and a faintness seemed to topple away
and leave me alone, where there were no strangling men
or *****, far-away wildernesses. Foul and torn, a cruel
face with no eyes hit the bone and screamed a breathless,
lungless scream, as though the whole place had stood up,
******, and left. I should have died.
Noise was coming from hard men's voices, white burning
and white flesh, when they saw and called out to them.
Rasping on the thorns, I understood that the boy,
and everything else, was like an acorn falling
from the oak tree. The man left and I went slowly
rolling into the choice I was choking on.

Some days when my feet hit the ground
and my heart passes by another
I feel a glimpse of warmth,
an inkling of something better
than what I have become used to,

but I am a mountain of ice
in an eternal desert. I have become barren
of all life and love, entirely forgotten
in a realm of fiery beauty.
There is no one who can see me, why

can no one see me? People only find
me once they have become lost
and forgotten, once the breath leaves
their body and the spark abandons
their eyes. I have been buried

alive in the deep hills and left to drown
in earth, left to rule a disturbed, haunted
land which makes every inch of my body
and every twisted landscape in my mind
ache for something more than this wretched life.