Places

Black wings falling through the caged, suffocated air
Into the lights of the bloated, swirling sea, seeing forms
That twist and turn and duck and weave, into the lair
Where I used to live, when I was water, the sea warms

Me the darker it becomes, I'm falling to the ocean bed
Resting under the fish that fly happily like wingless birds
As a tranquil underwater breeze turns dark sand dark red
And that blends with the water to form variants of words

That cannot be pronounced, only whispered from cold lips
That belong to something beautiful that is trapped here
And that from time to time distracts me from this place, whips
Jolts of concern across my brain and onto my face, a year

Passes by and the world resumes, the thoughts of before
Now in unhinged tombs, the dark world fades to a paler
Grey, the ocean changes to a river that flows behind a door
Under where I stand, looking down at the faces that tailor

To the mirror rather than the reverse, down steps and into
Water that grips and shapes and manipulates all the forms
It greets, like murky thoughts in sinister minds ive been to
Before I let go and drifted to where kindness swarms like

Bees to honey, I became the architect of my salvation and
Like a fated fallen one I rose to flow back to the mouth
Where a magnificent meeting point between sea and sand
Brings the river back to a glacier-filled sea, deep south

Where you can stand circled by a horizon while an absent
Sun beats down golden light from the huge, arching sky
While divine creatures laugh and spiral, seeming to present
Me with an option I cannot fathom, or understand why.

The sunless world sets, swaths of red and orange illuminate
The sky, and melt the ice causing vapour to rise and revolve,
Outlining striking patterns, found only in dreams we hate
As they remind us of a beauty life cannot contain, I resolve

To alter the scarlet heaven, and through close eyelids see
A change to night, where the painted sky brings me back
With a gasp, the my place of origin, a place I cannot be,
Wondering where I am in life, and wondering what I lack.