Wednesday 14 November 2018

Breaking the Surface














injury arrives on the outside

a scratch a weal a wen
brazen disfigurement

from inside
an eruption
volcanic under skin
blood like magma
pyroclastic rage
hot rock raining
from sulphur clouds
coiled inside

suffocation is only shortness of breath
drowning is how we wash away sin

flight transition liberation
epiphany ascension

surfacing
unbreathed air carries us
the will to live levitates
the weakest flesh
an inflated tissue of hope
a ballooning bubble
precedent

by analogy we become
free in a single bound
not halted at the border
statelessly imprisoned

boundaries division separation
water’s edge skin meniscus

the arriving soul rises

a thin man bursting from the fat man’s flesh
the pelagic fool striking upwards toward daylight
kith and kin sinking derelict into the deep

because being was never enough
and becoming perpetual motion
a vain conviction that stillness
cannot pacify the restless soul

even in a dead calm
we are frantic treading water
holding back turbulent blood

breaking surface breaking through
reaching out from this world
toward the next
© BH, 2018

I don’t know why I wrote this. Only after the fact can I try to interpret it. I think it’s about change: transition, transformation, transcendence, even. But that’s only a guess.

Sometimes, I think, poems just write themselves.

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