Mirae C
His Majesty’s Ship
Lovely, how they swim,
How chains of iron, blood, and steel
Float under a sliver of sun, becoming a sunken treasure.
Like an unheard voice, a rush of last breaths bubbling
Which fall on the most deafly cold ears
Of the deep bottomless blue.
Lovely, how they move,
How the heaviest weight,
The burden of Atlas, the one who carries the world,
Is lifted up to the heavens without a care.
Akin to helium balloons,
That drift, without purpose, at an empty fairground.
Lovely, how they disappear,
How hollow and shadows
Produce an angel’s halo.
The last white-golden glow of a young sunrise
Mirrored by quiet air and water,
Watch them fall while facing the endless sky.
Lovely, how they sink,
How the briny, unforgiving blue
Claims one and claims all as its children.
Eyes open, they search under the sky,
Under the vast skin of silky dark that
Hides storms and drowns secrets.
Anger
Spiked and sharp, cutting like a knife edge
Steel that’s mindlessly cold
Dark against stained white, once pure
Too tall to scale, it looms above
No gap underneath, no room to slip through
To escape
Tiny chinks and gaps show the light
But only briefly; bitter hard metal
Covers the rest
It snakes and curls gently in some places
Jabs and snarls in others
Always present in the corner of your mind
The only way to pass it, the only way to escape the gate, the steel
Is through
The ring of teeth.
Castle in the Sky
His shoes sat where they were placed
By small, careful hands.
They were still untouched, even when
The first of the carrion birds circled with harsh voices of metal.
They were forgotten, then, but persistent,
They wait.
For their rightful owner.
Through rain and snow so thick, it seems the whole world weeps, faithfully,
They wait.
Through hails of ice and brick, mingling in the air with voices of the lost,
They wait.
Same as before, just as it had been day after day, timeless, except
For a singed lace here
Or a scuffed sole there
When inevitable, graceless, helpless
Gravity slowly catches on, they follow, blazing a trail
On the edge of a storm,
Smelling of sulfur and anger, always misplaced and changed in rapturous fury.
The oldest mortar and brick crumbles
In an instant, barely longer than a blink.
Falling to earth, from its castle in the sky, built so proud.
The fall of an angel from its glorious isolation.
But even buried memories
Live, if given even a single gulp
Of air.
It survives on a sliver of sunlight,
A lonely twinkling star of hope in the burning heavens.
The barest glimpse of free sky,
Now torn ragged by rage and smoke, is all they wish for.
Almost suffocating under layers
Of dust and tears, far from open doors and warmth.
They crave the touch of others, of comfort.
But the sky gives no answer, distracted by brilliant fireworks of red and gold.
Under the bricks and the pain,
Beneath scorching scars and tears,
They remember, they know patience.
They wait
For him.
Only him.