My love has been slipping beyond my grasp, as if it's the faintest light in a lone island I reach in between the gaps of my fingers. In this mere happenstance, you are my greatest expedition that would be written in pages; A conquest that no one could ever have, I was a ticking bomb waiting for the fall of promises that were long drowned at the sea I called "you", a silent yet vengeful endless depth, I named it as my territory, a catastrophic dream, in an afternoon storm.

Stop.
Don't puff.
See the ocean?
Run and go.
Want to make a new friend?
Put down your phone.
Or do as you please,
but please don't smoke cigarettes in Siargao.
Don't make an irony of your stay
and a fool of yourself here.
Don't disrespect her sweet air,
don't bastardize her fresh breeze.

See the ocean?
Run and go.
Make a friend.
Do what you please.
Breathe in the sweet air.
Feel the kiss of the fresh breeze.
Don't smoke cigarettes in Siargao.

-

i hope we do not
(as a species)
"evolve"
into islands of
six foot radius circles
adrift upon oceans of
Social Media,

as Billionaires scoop up
space with the vacuum
of our losses

and then water ski across
surfaces of what once was
our own footsteps.

They Know—

we can not afford
to dog-paddle
our way across
their private
pool


by our wealth
                            alone...


s jones
2021

.

Mare Clausum
by Michael R. Burch

These are the narrows of my soul—
dark waters pierced by eerie, haunting screams.
And these uncharted islands bleakly home
wild nightmares and deep, strange, forbidding dreams.

Please don’t think to find pearls’ pale, unearthly glow
within its shoals, nor corals in its reefs.
For, though you seek to salvage Love, I know
that vessel lists, and night brings no relief.

Pause here, and look, and know that all is lost;
then turn, and go; let salt consume, and rust.
This sea is not for sailors, but the ******
who lingered long past morning, till they learned

why it is named:
Mare Clausum.

Originally published by Penny Dreadful. Keywords/Tags: mare, clausum, closed, sea, narrows, shoals, reefs, uncharted, islands, wreckage, shipwreck, damage, dark, tides, waters, surf, stranded, Robinson Crusoe

the wind brushing the mountain tops
the waves crashing into land
the soil saturated with sweet raindrops
and now I finally understand

islands in the vast ocean
dressed in mysterious clouds
always alive, constant motion
and now I say it out loud

this place feels like home
my soul and mind belong
a nordic paradise in every chromosome
sound of nature, its theme song

forever i will be
longing to awake
on these islands of my dreams
a precious keepsake

Mirrors and islands
Mirrors and islands
are all that I see

And the static fills my mind
eats it up like silence

It hums a constant note
glaring in and out
audible, barely
deafening.

The static fills my mind
and devours everything beneath it