LA MER

Poetry

[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED]

BY RUI CARLOS DA CUNHA

What is the death of the other to me

However overwhelmed with emotion

As their presence is my despair, I weep

To imagine their imminent absence

In this life, I have naught but emptiness

Still, as I am simply human, I feel

The memories remain but fade slowly

Haunted landscapes, I walk with ghosts long past

Egocentric tomfoolery, pretend

Death has no hold over my emotions

Emerging as fountains of tears, two streams

Answer my prayers as a broken golem

This shapeless-mass of clay enters my dreams

Holds me hostage in the ocean, a pool

Overlooking nothing but emptiness

Forms in my mind, filled with mussels and clams

Tortured by my own imagination

Hovering over nothingness, the sea

Endless wasteland of floating detritus

Objectified as a woman, la mère

Trusting my perceptions, I swim back home

However, this being a dream, I sleep

Entombed by fleece blankets in Chicago

Realizing nowhere is home, I plunge

To my death, a false negative, untruth

Observe my prison, I wake up each day

Memorializing others in life

Etched onto a ceramic glazed platter