High Tide
It began as an invitation
and it ends, with a barefoot, careful reclamation
of all your stereotypes.
I went walking, every time
there was too much left behind
of your poisons. Your pollutions.
Your attempts to leave things inside
not just your own inner world,
but mine.
Not just what you have been told,
but how you have been kept out of sight
and asked to hide
who you are.
But something has begun to come in, at last,
floating in on the dark:
something far too renegotiated.
Something that should have been recognised
as a very, very false start.
I don't want you to try anymore.
I have my little bench, on the jetty.
My home.
I'll be safe and warm
whereever and whenever you aren't
trying to overrationalise why you are superior to me.
Whereever and whenever your heart tells you
to set me free from your laughs, your anchors, your thieves
of the swamps. Of the marshes.
These were places where the harshest
victims of the night
could find comfort. Solace.
Laughter, even. Like I said
I have my house and my bench.
Go back to the faux-lighthouses
and the shadows that they cast. The stench
that is raised. Of annihilation and trying too hard
to reprehend an image
of the past,
that you think deserves merit.
I'll be waiting, all out, on the lake
for a wholly different kind of imperative.