The Driftwood Wanderer

I sat on the beach

Convincing myself,

I’m finished with poetry.

For once in my life,

Honestly and candidly,

I speak my mind to the tide

            I hate her,

I said,

            She ravished my heart and watched as it bled.

I pause to listen, my soul exposed;

                        A crash,

                                    A wave,

                                                Wordless empathy.    

The blood flow slowed, but it never stopped,

In it, I may drown,

I don’t know, I’m crazy, I’m caught

In her sea and see-nots,

I can’t break her down, she’s a tower.

The wind whispers her name,

Cruelly reminding me of this,

This very spot where we first met,

Soaked now with tidal mist

And tears, fresh and warm.

            Damn it, I said I wouldn’t cry.

                        Breathe,

Just breathe.

I lay my head down,

Flecked with sand and painful thoughts,

My heart pounding

To the immutable rhythm of the waves.

I alone on this broken shoreline.

Brothers, I think with a grin,

We are brothers, you and I.

I clutch the sand beneath my fingers

In a gritty, crunching embrace.

The crumbled remains of a once sturdy life.

           

Time slips away

                        On the breeze of the night,

                                    Gazing at horizonless skies.

My upturned cheek betrays the lines

Streaked across their sides,

And a two-fold glint

Reflects the stars,

In a sea of unseen joys.

                                   

I’ll always say that grin washed upon my face

From the ocean that night,

Like a lonely driftwood wanderer.

And I don’t know if it’s what they say,

But I’m saying it now:

            There is healing in the tide,

                        The waves,

                                    The waves that never cease to break.

Ergo Sum

In the breath of this moment,

I have only time enough to breathe.

Like the ghost of a vapor,

Shipwrecked on the shores

Of the ephemeral sea.

This instant, this second,

This volatile sense of existence,

Is all I have to shelter me

From what was and is and what could be.

Yet for its fleeting,

It spans the unthinkable, yawning chasm,

Of innumerable frames of this;

And somehow links our destinies

In a barrage of comings and goings.

Its unseen tendrils hold us back

From that ledge of Hamlet’s sleep.

That edge of every thought and sight;

The privilege to which we all have a right.

In and out, my moments go,

To and from my lungs;

Apart from this, I only know,

Hic diem est 
Ergo sum.