One fish to fish
Hook
Hooker
Bait
Line and sink her
Red fish
Blue fish
The bass drowns out
The invisible shadow of a shivering minnow
Dripping in silence outside the door
Paralyzed screams
Tapping gently for entrance
Crushed between a string of greasy thumb nails
Muted pauses
Hold your breath over the bridge
Till I’s go numb
Making wasted wishes that drown in the channel
Between solid ground and
I land
Flayed and suffocating on the rock
Waiting for rushing tides to change
And come in
Plucking hooks from bloody gills of
Persecuted Tupperware mothers
Gutted for less than
Two fins an hour
Sputter in the raped and emptied banks
Can’t account for the shattered hollowed walls
Torn veils and crumbled tombs
Her violent halo
Permeates paper thin walls
Endometrial wombs cannot afford your insatiable wound
But it’s your world man,
Owning old enslaved souls
From which you
Take take take
Parasites like barnacles clamped in damp life to dead see
The quahog rake
Scrape scrape scrapes
Stuffs her
Till there’s nothing left but burning sky and the sinew rope of starving veins
To tangle and choke
One fish
To fish
Red fish
Blue fish
~
We ate it. And anyway, I’m blue.
Powerful imagery, E.
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Thanks V.
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Welcome.
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So good. Those innocent Suessian line recast in darkness as a bucket of chum. The play at the end on “fish / to fish”, and Red/Blue. “Tupperware mothers / Gutted for less than / Two fins an hour” is amazing. And OK, yes, eat your blues with the bluefish.
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Ahh, thanks q. Poor Suess huh? 😉
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what Qbit said and: ”… insatiable wounds …”
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😊🙏🏼
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Ouch! Great images. This one oozes pain.
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Yep. It hurt like hell but what a relief to get it out.
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I know what you mean.
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You’re the master of poetry Bob.
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Aw. 😊
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Nice blog! 🙌🏻
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Thanks!
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I have been so awful at reading blogs – for a very long time now. I have thought of you today – and am so happy to find you still here and still writing. I will be a better reader from now on.
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Hey Ren. Always good to hear from you. Of course I’m still here. Writing and reading are my sanctuary. We all need our sanctuaries more now than ever. You’re always welcome.
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An incredible play on words, making me think and reflect – how much do I really pay attention to everyone else? Not nearly enough.
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This morning I was researching something called ‘solution aversion’. We can only see what aligns with our worldview which is steeped in the neurobiology of survival. Sometimes that means we also struggle to see ourselves.
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