I've always felt I was a better poet than a fiction writer. The generally shorter form allows me to get my ideas, emotions, and themes down in a concise way without having to shoehorn a bunch of extraneous shit on it that I may not necessarily be very good at.
So here's one of mine.
Quote:
48° 52′ 36″S 123° 23′ 36″WNight falls as we sink; the sun,
shimmering behind the surface’s moving frosted glass,
fades away into nothing, the bright ocean
blue of paint on a beachside restroom
deepening into the darker blue of midnight.
Eyes are watching us, darting into holes
as we pass by. Today’s word: bathypelagic.
We are the aliens here, unwanted. Interlopers.
Like walking into a strange seaside town.
The locals surveil us, consider our taste.
Deeper still. Blue gives way to black,
like a bruise. Looking up, the sky
is so far away, the sun never
to be seen again. Never warm again.
The sea is but a bottomless pit,
yet even down here, there is life.
Howard was afraid of this. I can’t
say I blame him. Flashes in darkness-
something is moving. Life in the dark.
If darkness is a cavern, then we
are lost, we are directionless. This far
down here, there is no more up.
The shroud of oceanic night swallows us.
Only light can overpower it, pierce it.
Marine snow, the detritus of life above
showers down upon us, like Christmas blizzards.
Searching feels futile, yet it yields results:
the cave within a cave, the very
mouth of darkness. We are in the
flooded basement of the Earth, looking for
something forever lost beneath the perpetual deluge.
Strange lights, glowing like ultraviolets in a
seedy nightclub, show us the way, before
suddenly skittering away in fright, robbing us
of a guide. But we’ve come too far
to need dubious help now, and so
we continue, deeper, into a world unseen
by even the hardiest of seaborne monsters.
And, down here, the darkness begins to
fade away again, into the strange blue
light of the ocean so far above.
These, then, are the chambers of that
which can never be unseen, the very
Heart of the ocean, indescribable, inimitable, unthinkable.
The walls covered with tendrils, bright blue
light illuminating these abyssal halls, growing brighter.
Following this pale light, at the end
is the core, the center, the source.
And yet, there is no throne for
this throne room, there is only a
pulsing life, the water throbbing with each
beat of this nameless organ, a creature
of mouths and tentacles and the deathly
light of ghosts. For this is what
the seas are made of, this colossal
creature, whose backside is a day’s travel
away from the mouth of this chamber.
From whence did this creature come forth?
Was it born here, on this Earth
or did it come here to seek
solace from the stars? It sings, yet
does not sing, telling of terrible knowledge
and promising every secret of the sea,
in exchange for knowledge again, seeking out
the secrets its influence cannot uncover. We
are transfixed in its invisible gaze, and
cannot help but agree to the transaction,
the darkness of waiting mouths nothing like
the darkness of the abyss, oblivion paling
in comparison to the choking black of
night beneath waves glittering in the sun.
