Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
A person who has died and finds they are awake, as though death was but a dream, knows not, if they are honest, what was experienced between.
Terror shrouds experience with a warning barely whispered, though none know of what is said, and when another tries to comprehend the words, there’s nothing, because no one can hear what they don’t understand. We only think we listen.
We don’t. Listen. Is it that we don’t or is it just too overwhelming to hear some challenge to good cheer, and to remember how to think? How we think? What they are saying? What we say and how? What they think.
I’m sure, I’m sure I saw, I did, I saw the Raven blink.
With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
We could nor laugh nor wail;
Through utter drought all dumb we stood!
I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,
And cried, A sail! a sail!
Those stairs around the spiral wall are dented smooth as pillows
Where nuns once led into the darkened crypt and told you without words; that no, not sky above but more, that doom is question’s destination
And manacles of iron that blunt memory with deceit and land you, instead,
In an open sea of mental-hunted monsters, amidst sharks that still have fins,
Or else a field of blighted hunger, mostly rotten for the poor,
White flowers for a wife’s bouquet of years before, but wait…
Is that the raven at my door?
And every tongue, through utter drought,
Was withered at the root;
We could not speak, no more than if
We had been choked with soot.
You bought it all, that life was best when death was done and dusted
But they lied and now you have no choice but to remember
It’s late December and drought defies the sentiment that snow will surely come.
Did I have a voice this time last year? Or was I that fucken dumb because I KNOW there should be snow, so…
And that the raven’s curse has come.
The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.
Living is a paradox of lies and love, and waiting for some recognisable something
Burning hope in ribboned packages that will take a memory
To break the story and set the listener free.
That’s christmas.
It never was the childhood thing once told to me.
A homeless man so desperate for what is called a family.
So now he waits, just like predation, to tell a story that he
wishes had died instead of everything he thought he had
that drowned in that shimmering sea.
That blew him apart with all that hated, fated insane hope.
Be careful, I’m like him, I took the bait and raised the sail
And watched her catch the wind.
Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes:
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.
A person who has died and finds themselves awake as though that death was but a dream knows not, if they are honest, what they experienced was thin air.
So they listen to the music until their ears rot black with blight
And hide that beast, that hulking thing that said this stuff is meant to feed the hunger,
When no one remembers who they once had been and how they should beware,
That the raven is the sorcerer of the darkest night, or here, too full of light.
But destiny demands her alms, her story that is twisted, like witches in the aftermath of christmas, she is pregnant with the silence of a tale I should remember of some bitter cold December, and I am doomed to tell the one who’s happy please, just go; to quickly, fucken quickly, fucken slam that fucken door, because this killer heat should be just one degree, ice heavy on the river,
But canisters of snorted snow have not enabled us to know
That the raven’s in, ragged with dust, and he whispers, Nevermore.
All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
So the woman and the raven ask two question: why do we do what we think is important when we can never know the consequences until retrospectively? And then repeat it as though it will work out better the next time?
