Depth Charge

WWI was cool with their technology I guess

Depth Charge

I wonder what souls look like--

are they bright lights or are they

the nucleuses of every single

cell that creates our

genetic makeup?

I think that, like cats, we have

nine lives to live and that every time something

even remotely bad happens to us that’s

one less time we have to die.

So when the bombs went off one by one and

the underwater craft began to shake and shudder

as its rusty metal bolts strained from their sockets,

all I could think about was how it was only

life number five and how unfair it was for

the universe to cut me four years short

of our original contract.

Dull bulbs awoke scarlet with anger from

their slumber and whining sirens of protest

bounced from wall to wall as

Leviathan,

      the Kraken,

   Poseidon

gripped tight down onto creaking iron and

gave a rough, callous palpitate--

it didn’t seem like man was turning on us,

but rather the ocean itself was attempting to

cause a sort of decades-late

shaken baby syndrome on us.

I thought of you and how I might

never see you again.

(And even if I somehow transformed into

Lazarus, it seemed like a fat chance to me

that I might ever surface from the

infinite depths of the Atlantic--

I thought I might create a home out of

some coral and some seaweed;

find a place to sleep between an

anemone and a starfish.)

Salt water drizzled atop my head and I closed

my eyes at the feeling of my ears popping with

the sudden decision of the captain to surface;

a death at sea where we could look up at the sky above

and think about how cruel the guardian angels

were to give us such hope and then

rip it away as if it were a stolen token.

We would die basked in golden light but after all the

sins we had done, I thought that I should anticipate

a cold grasp at my ankles dragging me

down into Lucifer’s faux-winged clutches instead--

I wondered if that was the feeling birds got

when their wings were clipped;

a forceful disfigurement in a way that

prohibits freedom of any sort.

I closed my eyes and thought of you and your

long brown hair and caramel colored eyes

and the possibility that if my soul really was made up

of microscopic particles of my genetic makeup, that

when I died and my body disintegrated into the earth

that my soul might decompose as well.

I thought about the divide that would run

between us into the earth, creating a

fault line rent and ruptured beyond

all forms of repair.

The breath you’ll breathe is the

bridge between us;

the bed I’ll sleep in is the

total distance.

Author's Note

Constructive criticism is sweet man

Reviews

[Epipsychologist]

First of all, this poem is awesome. I like that it tells a story, and that the name "Depth Charge" isn't simply a poetic device. Rather, it's a poetic device in the sense that one is meant to be. It implies something "charged" with "depth," but it fulfills a promise you've made to the reader to actually include depth charges.

Constructive criticism: In the third stanza replace "years" with "deaths." "Years" implies that your narrator expected to die exactly once a year, but "deaths" is truer to the idea (which is an interesting one) and adds to the tone.

"Lazarus, it seemed like a fat chance to me." I would remove this allusion or reword some of this stanza. Your allusions suggest higher education but your phrasing suggests colloquialism, so the voice is slightly inconsistent here.

Back to positive stuff: From other things you've written I gather that wings and ascension are an important metaphor for you. Particularly, you seem to grapple with the notion of salvation against the reality of physical causation (hence the wings need to physically exist, and the fact that they can be clipped suggests something horrible about the soul's chance of ascension). I think you probably feel something of Truth in this imagery because you use it frequently. That feeling of a poetic truth, and here I speak with a kind of wishful thinking regarding myself, is what will separate you from the others as a writer.

[J. Kell]

Wow so great... I love the way you can write such lengthy poems but everything flows from one image to another without you ever breaking your original thought. Great write.