Poetry (65)

Hello Escritori,

Unfortunately I couldn’t think of anything to help aptly mark Remembrance Sunday. I’m going to have to go ahead with this poem I mentioned to Lynn a while ago. Fret ye not dear Readers, the Black Dog has passed since this was written.

The Mournful Mermaid

I despise this descent

Into apathy.

The feeling that I exist

Only to embody

A shambling apology

Of the person I could be.

 

I hate that I begin

To disgust me.

 

This illness is

A slick, black cobra;

With its executioner’s hood

Unfurling again:

From the dry husk

Of my everyday skin.

With venom that looks

As innocuous as milk.

 

I know it has a name,

But that doesn’t make

A difference to anything.

It’s the existential complaint

Of a dehydrated mermaid:

Depression.

 

The word itself makes sense.

Subdues, represses, reduces.

It compresses like a corset:

Panels of bone, solid, dense.

I pity the whale it came from.

Brother. Belovéd.

 

He and I are transmuted.

The extremity of our

Difference now suggests

It is better to be alone.

 

“Endure,” everyone says,

“Il faut souffrir pour être belle.”

 

But instead;

He and I

Assist in the mystique

Of moulding Woman.

Whilst inside

We voluptuously,

Swell.

Weeping out our mutual

Alien salt

To all those who can tell.

 

When the scales fall

From their eyes,

I must confess

That they came

From my tail.

And furthermore

That all at present

Is not quite well.

 

(© Copyright Pola Negri, 23/10/2016.)