05-01-2026, 12:51 AM
I don't know how to do the previous version thing so I will just post the edit here. There is a line in this that might be considered controversial, which wasn't my intention; I just wrote it to try to tie the poem together and then thought after the fact it might be problomatic, but I have left it in...
Edit
The Med is a graveyard.
Crying underwater, salt mixes with the fresh,
an unholy alchemy, dissolving with the rest.
My body drifts
down the river, to the sea,
weighed down by the cloth I hold,
in my hands a birthday suit,
sodden, full of light.
The weeds, the sea-weeds
caress my puckered skin
they wrap me in their bladderwrack adoration
Gently flagellating, parting like the sad
Magician’s curtains, to reveal a host,
a flock of ragged tourists, floating just above the
grey dance floor, toes describing
arabesques through the silt of a thousand expeditions,
clasping their dreams like children.
Sometimes, just clasping,
their children.
Milk eyes stare in blank accusation
of my misremembered life.
I never knew the sea, the sea
had so much hope, and misery,
buried deep down where
the salt and fresh collide.
Edit
The Med is a graveyard.
Crying underwater, salt mixes with the fresh,
an unholy alchemy, dissolving with the rest.
My body drifts
down the river, to the sea,
weighed down by the cloth I hold,
in my hands a birthday suit,
sodden, full of light.
The weeds, the sea-weeds
caress my puckered skin
they wrap me in their bladderwrack adoration
Gently flagellating, parting like the sad
Magician’s curtains, to reveal a host,
a flock of ragged tourists, floating just above the
grey dance floor, toes describing
arabesques through the silt of a thousand expeditions,
clasping their dreams like children.
Sometimes, just clasping,
their children.
Milk eyes stare in blank accusation
of my misremembered life.
I never knew the sea, the sea
had so much hope, and misery,
buried deep down where
the salt and fresh collide.