Exile

My worlds are waiting, beyond the fog before the waters.
Drifting slowly out to sea.
The noise of life murmurs endlessly.
They fade in and out.
The light of their lives shines ever onward.
Dimming.
Further and further I go out to the endless sea.

Brothers above lovers, treading water,
reaching out into the mists of time,
rising above this pooled abyss.
Calling my name,
conducting echoes,
searching for their self-exiled marionette.

There is no telling of the shallows.
Explanations over such a tyrannical distance
are self-imposed and hollow—
a false invention,
and drowning in a skin-deep sea.

There is no truth in the deep black tides.
No way back to shore.
Only the leviathan—
the madness of a silent surface,
a windless horizon, and a cold embrace.

It tells me what I want to hear.
Its words become my words.
I am smothered into view,
basking in this endless pain,
being seen with serpent eyes—
a square pupil locked on the soul.

Ward my words and disfigure my meaning—
this life at sea, bastardised.
Smash my boat to pieces, capsized.
Watch me fight the waters, traumatised.
Illustrate, with silent indifference,
the belief in my screams,
and extract what’s left from my drowning—
canonised.