Wednesday, November 18, 2009

ship-wrecked

I put on the absurd flip-flip
I am having to do this
there is a ladder.
hanging obscenely

I go down-.
the oxygen immerses me
my flip-flops cripple me,
I crawl like an insect

I am blacking out and yet
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

the thing I came for:
the ribs of the accident
curving their assertion
among the loyal hunters.

this is the place.
and I am here,
amongst the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course

the water-eaten log
the fouled compass
speak of a love
which is now gone forever

17 comments:

Thom Gabrukiewicz said...

Not senseless, but sing-song. I like the way this flows.

Crash

anthonynorth said...

Melancholy but handled perfectly.

Book Bird Dog said...

It's so sad. Poignant.

Sasidharan Cheruvattath said...

Gloomy images stir. Deeply moving.

Sepiru Chris said...

Not senseless at all.

I feel directionless, compassless, rudderless with my crippling flip flops and with my love gone forever.

I like the way that you rely solely on connotations, eschewing denotations.

Your technique provides a murkiness to the actions in the poem, but feelings and ideas slip out, coiling and unwinding in the darkness, like thin streams of oil from a ruptured drum, colliding and elliding, then thinning out as my fingers skim through them, searching for meaning and, maybe for purpose, and gaining some, too.

Sepiru Chris said...

ooh!

A second visit, via the train!

And I still like what I hear 'twixt my ears.

Tschuess,
Chris

Julia Phillips Smith said...

'I am blacking out and yet
I have to learn alone'

Feels like my mid-NaNo despair...

Ana said...

It is like abandoning oneself to a surreal adventure. The third stanza, I like that image –or better the images I can image reading it. thanks. Ana

Tumblewords: said...

Kicking and screaming into the deep blue. Well written, as always.

Jeeves said...

Speaking of love, which is now gone forever. That said a lot

Ann (bunnygirl) said...

I like the quiet sense of exploration here, the sense of timelessness and metaphor.

~willow~ said...

Certainly not senseless! Perhaps the beginning struggled a bit, but then, so did the diver! :) Like someone else pointed out, perhaps your style unknowingly mirrored what you were writing about? :)

when the musics over said...

As always, you paint very affecting images. Very nice.

Felicity said...

Very sad imagery. But it's very beautifully sad. :)

one more believer said...

felt the feeling and in flipflops underneath the waters... cannot help but to think of the titanic...the pictures from so long ago

Lorraine said...

Another one that makes me drown..and appeals to me, simultaneously...who are you...x

Cassiopeia Rises said...

Very nicely put Tami. I love the way it flows like a river.

love,Melanie