Glasswater Island

Breakers roll in from the xenlands beyond

As I click free from my seat-belt,

A causeway of black canvas,

A defence against life itself.

Open the car door slam it closed with all the despair

From my mind’s azimuth;

Walk onto the oblong of shingle,

Feel it through my shoes the pain of a thousand sea-souls.

The cliffs behind stand no chance

Against the antimatter winds:

Lunar flares have eroded the coastline.

Corroded metal containers from a cargo vessel

Bump up the beach carried by the caressing hands of the tide,

Gigabytes floating on a sea of superconductors,

Silicon, gallium, it makes no difference all are toxic,

All ready to recharge the hopeless or the insane.

 

Alone on the beach I strip to my underwear

Run into the freezing exhilaration

Glide towards Glasswater Island,

The only hope for the hopeless.

Navigating through the floating junkyard;

Feel a warmth spread from the sea

Into my pathogenic body

Reaching into the twisted cables of mind-coral

As I negotiate the final mile to the Island,

Into hope salvation rebirth.

 

The sun is a portal in the cosmic interface

Letting in the afterglow of post-human release,

Joy postponed not cancelled,

Paradise on hold not lost,

With red-yellow irradiant to fireside the heart.

Thrust backwards stand upright

Wade onto the beach at Glasswater Island salt water dripping

From blue-cotton shields wrapped around my thighs,

Feeling the shadow in my soul

Starting to disincorporate reverse-clouding my brain.

 

The call of the gulls is the island’s only music

Fingers of sound animating race memories of life

Before the dawn of humanity,

When this island was inhabited only by sea-angels

And the deity’s own airborne marionettes.

 

Standing here amongst the solitude of centuries past

Knowing I will be at peace here –

No human has set naked foot on this shore for millennia;

The Island chooses who will bathe

In its otherworldly light,

Who will hear its symphony from another dimension

No-one to shatter the atmosphere of embryonic stillness,

Nothing to terrify its chosen ones,

Nothing to disturb my equilibriant vortex,

Knowing never again do I

Have to face the cruel outshores:

For no-one ever leaves Glasswater Island.