What was I before I crept from the bottomless well?
Little did I know of the rain soaked grounds,
the piercing sharpness of red rose thorn.
Crawling as if swimming,
I’m a water snake with hands
grasping for breath with every inch.
The ground is its own well to scale.
If only I could stand,
but I must drag on my belly, fingers dripped in mud.
There’s a howling unlike anything I’ve heard below the sea.
All noise becomes a funneled static wail before my lurch.
In the open, it stanzas with the wind.
The cacophony predates my settled storm,
now hollow gait floating.
My body, a ship in the shallow sea made mostly out of coral,
ones dark and brown, housing aplenty life before the tide.
The rain does not cease to fall.
It covers ground faster than I.
Half filled, my eyes.
To breathe again, stopping every time.
My lids, they act as gutters, refilling tears.
Tear away preconception and perception and give me nuance and appreciation
for the vast wonder that lives outside.
And for the ones that live inside, the water rise.
Lurch forward forever on taking notes along the way.
The sights, smells, and sounds are not completely drowned, not completely muted.
So much to latch onto in seek of rest.
Distractions, not always best, but welcome.
Wring out my hair like a mermaid on the rock.
My legs don’t shine, hence the scales.
Hallucination dies with erosion.
Where am I going?
My mind limited within the scope, could only fathom someday reaching surface.
It’s too grand now in unfiltered light.
Too much out of sight to grasp.
But I can use the water as a lens.
I can focus when the oxygen fills my lungs.
I can make my own well.
There’s nothing wrong with honing in.
Even in the sea, I am my own island, my own world to explore.
So many worlds therein.
I am the serpent, the tortoise with a wide back without a shell.
I am the well within the land beneath the surface,
more bottomless than my escape.
The rain brings infinite ascent.
We are not drowning, we’re only swimming in a liquid sky
with clouds like lily pads solidify the eager concrete thoughts.
Give more safe haven.
I see the other travelers for the first time.
It's within my new found scope to grasp them without having been a cloud,
having died the many times yet to live again and go unnoticed.
No one puts a spotlight on the self better than I.
A little bit of hubris. Was I better dense or left to form?
I can be the friction that brings about a storm without a need to wield.
We can chase those twisters on the highway like madmen with
antennas pointed forward and upward.
Conductors, conduits, and seeds -
vehicles that no one has to drive.
Just irrigate and plant away without a care,
without so much as a whisper for a second opinion.
Populate and multiply.
There was nothing meant to judge or hold back.
It was all a game we made when we didn’t know any better,
when our world was yet to form or be perceived as real.
But that’s all ok.
It adds foliage to the landscape as the water flows aground.
How much longer till we end the masquerade in the lower decks?
The captain is in his quarters.
The holes are reinforced and mended fine.
We dance despite our dwindling resources and miserable hauls,
never thinking “who’s to blame?”
It’s a good life, even with the sickness and the salty sting.
I get stronger when I pull the rope and wash the deck.
Though with a gnawing hunger I sing, I smile showing my yellow rotted teeth,
my brothers next to me.
“Tis not our maiden voyage, nor ever shall it be.”
“We want for not, nor do we have, but this life at sea.”“The wind does howl, the boat does creek, the captain cries “Yeehee!”
“He’s begging for a mutiny.”
Wasted all, face planted in the wood, some fortunate to reach their cots.
No one heard the ringing in the night above their cell.
We took comfort in dreams while our head was blown apart,
ripples in the gray,
prophecies half-fulfilled.
The goddess became our shepherd with her waves to herd us in.
Might as well be cursed pirates having not to say.
Work and keep the vessel clean beside your merry men.
But I pick them like daisies or cordelias.
Come with me under the moon and watch the stars that no longer serve to guide.
They are the souls that wish for you and beautify your garden.
Look how they persist on you, above the crawl and the clouds, untouched by waves.
To them you are the star.
Have you ever noticed?
You create your own heat, your own light, your own pattern of waves.
You are a world to explore like many others but not only unto yourself.
There is a view from the hilltop looking down.
Garbage infested shores taking long to clean by one alone.
Come reach thee. Come.
Carry on, but to the side some.
You can afford to take a hand and pitch in.
The sand can be a fort if you build it,
if you weld the doors shut so that there are no cracks.
You could also build a mote and lay a bridge,
take on councilmen.
I sympathize with the weeds you’ll one day pull and dust you’ll clean or liberate from the senses.
From where do your ideas form?
Lateness was not in the cards until I took to minding them,
the way they feel in the creases or on their sides.
I took to things apart from meaning, apart from the intended goal.
It was in those things that I found space, more space than what existed physically.
This was my closet, my battle chest. My treasured belongings crept in there.
No matter how far, how deep we go, there are ever walls inside us meant to keep things safe.
What do I give back to the world from which I take?