Sign away on this ancient obligation
To clock-watching battle trenches
A steady measurement of fever,
Toxicity.
Optimists listen for a heartbeat.
Tick.
Tock.
Swim into a lake of ice.
A steadfast surface un-cracked—
Here’s an easy oath
To take.
Desperate cries for, and of, presence;
But all I hear are shouts
To jump.
Possible only if I could stop falling
Out of the present.
Anchored to stonewall tendencies,
My great barrier belief,
I’m holding my breath.
Tick.
Tock.
Or drowning.
These baptisms of standards
Overflow me with sorrow,
The salts of dehydration.
No one leads a true, great quest
To discover
This sunken ship of pleasures.
Without patience, their corks bob with life,
Troubled by the inconvenience
Of the dive.
You need oxygen
Like I need lungs.
I can’t take the bait of your hope,
Tastes of poison in my mouth.
The luring charade
My gut rejects instinctively;
Schools I could never follow—
Confusing rituals to conjure
Closeness.
To me, looks like oil on the surface
Suffocating with no light.
With depths so familiar
And a surface so alien,
I dare not kick my legs.
© 2014 Christine Bradley