- Non-Erotic Poetry
- All Within Our Floods
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Walking in the shade. The long fingered dim all around the ships.
The hollow no-light that we made.
Bricks clatter under keel here and there. Skeletons of our marks.
Remnants of our flood. Proof of our passed-over past.
Now just ghosts of civility.
Clawing at a hull. Devious masonry reefs under the surface.
Grasping at rudder.
In shallows made at our hand. Brackish with focus on the consequent.
On deltas made by our pride.
Stagnant in tainting desire. Shapes moving on the surface slowly turn.
The misshapen ones. The forgotten ones.
Those ones who didn't get away from what we all did.
All the remainders and the reminders.
The hungry maws that wander the littered shores.
Taken by our flood. Proof of our self-cannibalizing greed.
Now just ghosts of love.
Dirty air on low clouds. Never again a clearing sun on a brightened day.
Twilight our stony constant.
Cast upon our skins. A no-flesh keloid mapping atrocities upon us.
Burned into our muscles.
Paddle upon a broken water. Further along our contagion shores.
Pole upon a polluted bed.
Past our poison points. Down undulate beachhead cut to choking stump.
Lighthouse spewing gouts of flame.
No signal found here but the distress of failure. A breakdown in function.
Forged in our flood. Proof of our hook-nailed handiwork.
Now just ghosts of guidance.
Jagged cliff-face teeth. Cancerous daybreak reveals it all in dim clarity.
Stony fangs in dawn.
Hung with bloodletting. Climbing slow from feigned waves.
Held in battery.
No welcoming hands here. No cradling bosom or kind smile to cleave to.
The hollowed coves. The hallowed emptiness.
Silent above crashing roar. Looming over sullen sunken hulls and hulks.
Roaring over silent tombs.
Sundered by our flood. Proof of our ever-ready recidivism.
Now just ghosts of longevity.
Chewing at toxic tides. And all those that approach in desperate faith.
Gnawing on floats that dare.
Scour remnant scraps alive. The final stages of a capsized existence.
Rent one wail at a time.
Tombstone memories. Alone and silent they sound unknown depths.
Sink unto a forgotten age.
- COMMENTS
greenmountaineerover 7 years agoI like commenting on comments, particularly when it's a matter of someone of Angeline's stature as a poet. It adds a workshop dimension to the process. I agree with everything she wrote, except for the "my," knowing how the military almost makes a religion out of teamwork in its training.
Angelineover 7 years agoThis is a fine big splash of poetry, maybe prose poetry but certainly unforgettable images coming at the reader hard and fast. You've come a long way since you started writing here: you poems now are bigger in scope, you experiment more and your range in much wider. I'm so glad I've had the opportunity to read your poetry throughout this time. :-)
I have two nitpicks:
1) You use "our" throughout the poem instead of "my" and yet the poem seems so personal and specific to a single person. Should it really be "my" instead?
2) In your last line the use of "unto" sounds like an anachronism to me. Just my opinion but I think "into" would be smoother.
Anyway wD, keep writing. You have a lot of poetry in you!
Ashesh9almost 8 years agopoignantly excellent Waking !! 5-ed .....
greenmountaineeralmost 8 years agoInteresting, wD. It had a stream of consciousness aspect; yet there was a coherence. It felt something like a modern day River Styx.
I suspect this was very personal for you. Congratulations on the editor's choice designation.
