The Kraken and the Spitting Sea
Poetry Sunday
I do not remember vividly —
perhaps, this memory is from another life, or perhaps
it spawned around the time when
God and mother’s womb were having one of their heated arguments
Perhaps, you could not classify it as a memory at all, and
it’s just an ancient tale whispered in a shadow’s ear
But as the myth goes and the tale is told,
it was a time
when my emptiness was a sheet as fragile as glass. With a little summer,
you could melt its frozen surface that caged all kinds of life —
whales and deep-sea monsters hibernating in its starving belly,
you could free
to tumble and swivel over its expansive hairline
but as the myth goes and the tale is told,
it was on a dark pouring night, when in the depth of my dark despairing eyes,
between the Kraken and the dark cloud, between the thunderbolt and the spitting sea, I saw
a child being swept away by a gang of violent waves —
flopping and exhausted, he let out tremendous sighs
but while our mysterious narrator hit crescendo,
out of the unbroken sky, from offing to mist, and lighthouse to cruise ship,
our demigod refused to materialize. In his stead, in my reflection,
a black monster hovered over my shoulders. Giggling,
he reached for my ears and acted as if he’d known me forever
“Perhaps he deserves better”, he said,
to which I responded with a tentative nod, and
by his insidious side, saw the child transform
from weight to deadweight, from breath to odor.
