my beard grows lengthy 'neath these waves

my beard grows lengthy 'neath these waves of north atlantic deep.

it's been far too long since i felt the cool razor slide

     from stem to stern, the sting of spirit'd salt in my curves.

i spend my hours in quiet, slumber'd peace

     'neath the solitary white star,

the cold silence of northerly nautical latitudes.

my grave, my corpse (the latticework of mold'd steel,

my decay'd frame, my broken pieces scatter'd

     amongst the silence of scuttling crabs and colour'd fish)

hides, disguises my opulent beauty, my former splendor,

my elegance, my decadence, my sheer audacity

     to taunt inevitability.  i was unsinkable! 

yet here i lie-- a sunken heap 'neath the salt'd waves

     so cold, so deep, a titanic, solemn shelter;

my sweeping strands, now host to aquatic creatures' creep.

Author's Note

written for "from an image born" group, challenge 10

Reviews

[Quill up a gay ape's bu..]

I don't know if you've noticed, but your keyboard appears to be broken. It keeps missing out "E" and replacing it with an apostrophe. Of course, it makes no difference to the sound of the word, but it must play havoc with spellcheck.
This reminds me of the song by Status Quo..."Down, down, deeper and down..."

[Sara]

hmmm... i do like how you took it from the pov from the ship, that's cool... the language and structure of the poem i have no fault with and the formal way you write here fits the ship's antiquated time period (lol at the comment below :D)... still, i feel like you kind of went with the obvious here -- you were given a picture of the *titantic*, so you wrote about the *titantic*... i don't know, i just think a more original spin could be put on it... spice it up a little bit, make me go 'wow, that's different! i never even thought of the picture that way!' ;) ... really, this photo is probably more of a challenge than all the others (say, the 'yellow wallpaper' one or the 'time' one i just reviewed), since those photos were more abstract and open to a wide varietry of interpretation... since this photo is so point-blank on subject (a sunken ship. period.), i think it would be harder to achieve something unusual, something that played on its more hidden or mysterious aspects... just my thoughts ;)

[Ruth]

A different perspective j.r. :) A great one too! Its interesting how many different slants are written about it lol
Your poem is outstanding, a wonderful piece of work to accompany the image my friend!

"'neath the solitary white star, the cold silence

of northerly nautical latitudes.

my grave, my corpse-- the latticework of mold'd steel,

my decay'd frame, my broken pieces scatter'd".........................Beautiful imagery!

Awesome j.r. love

xx

[Chloe..Across the Unive..]

J.R. I like what you took from this image ...
Speaking as one who went down with her.
A beautiful ship, unsinkable like Molly Brown...or so they thought.
This is a poignant look at this horror...
I enjoyed your image born from this image.

Chloe