We are so tired

Gold cherry

By sid

Sat, 24 Feb 2018
  • 2953 reads
10 comments
 

Treading water.  

Clawing at the surface but 

unable to keep our heads above it. 

Reaching out toward distant land 

where grieving lovers wring their hands

but the deep is immense and we are

infinitessimal and it drags us further and 

further out with every passing moment. 

They scream at us;  you must fight

but the deep is immense and the cold is

intense, and we are so tired. 

 

Perhaps we are weak, perhaps we lack the will

but there is treacherous ecstasy in surrender. 

When my body has shuddered its last and my

lungs are filled with dark water, the voices on the 

shore are lost to the wind, and I struggle no longer. 

Now we are free- we drift like seaweed- tell them to

leave us, tell them not to try to save us. I am a 

creature of the deep now, please don't let them

try to fish me out and force the water from my

sodden corpse. 

Let me smash into bloody fragments on antediluvian 

rocks, let the little fishes hide inside the sockets of my

eyes. Let me dissolve and become the water,

for I am so tired. 

Certificate PG
Poem
Unclassified

Comments

Submitted by sid on

Inspired by TS Eliot's Waste Land

 

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

This reads like a dream Sid - the rhythm is pitch perfect for the subject. (would sound brilliant if you made a recording of it - and if you do, please put a link here) So nice to see you back again!

 

Submitted by Di_Hard on

This sounds like the slop and pull of the sea's surface, felt the weariness, wanting to give in. Being useful, wanted, a part of something only once you are no longer you. It would be very moving, read aloud, I agree?

 

Submitted by rjnewlyn on

This is our Facebook and Twitter Pick of the Day! Please share/retweet if you like it

Picture Credit: http://tinyurl.com/hls2vem

(Sid - the image has just been added for publicity purposes; feel free to remove it if you'd prefer)

 

Submitted by seashore on

Love this...can see it & feel it. A full-on experience.

Submitted by Parson Thru on

Hi sid. Long time, no read. This is great. Like a great new song that echoes familiar phrases you can't place.

I've just come from reading a comment of yours on something I wrote back in 2012. You mention Cancer Ward, which I hadn’t read back then, but got around to at the end of last year. I've been immersed in, among others, Eliot and Rimbaud, whose Le Bateau Ivre mentions drowned men sinking backwards into sleep. There was a similar hook in a section of Céline's Journey To The End Of The Night, which I'm reading also and - darn - if Dylan himself doesn't hit on the Titanic in Desolation Row, which I'm relearning and recited through in the sleepless hours, imagining those moments of final exhaustion. So, what a joy to link from that 2012 comment and come to your We are so tired this morning with rain washing the balcony outside an open window.

Great to read you again, sid.

Parson Thru

Submitted by sid on

Thanks very much everyone who took the time to read, and for the positive comments; I have been out of the game for a while and confidence has sunk a bit, so it was a real boost to find that people engaged with this. Golden cherries too always a real treat, thanks eds. Lovely to be back.

Parson Thru, thanks for the blast from the past, I will have to go and have a look what you have posted in my absence. I had been reading Eliot a lot when I wrote this and I guess the mood of Waste Land stuck with me, but when I thought about it I realised the image that inspired me actually came from Joyce's Ulysses- when they drag the body out of the water all bloated and green, something about little fishes eating the eyes. I always loved that bit, for some strange reason.

Great to be back xx

 

Submitted by london_calling79 on

Gets better with every read.

 

Submitted by Parson Thru on

Just seen that you were on the site. Hello!

Hope all's well.

Parson Thru

Submitted by sid on

Hello I am alright thanks, very nice to get a warm welcome when I come home, thank you! You have elicited a real-life smile from me