Literary Vandals

by PW Covington

He scribed all his needs onto parchment
All his fears and dreams and fantasies
Sealed behind repurposed glass and cast upon the tide
Distillery green and corked

The years, for all their barnacles
And Sargasso grass and oil slicks,
Never expected, never over-due
Pregnant, dead, and living all the same

Sunbeat in the doldrums
Forgotten like that physicist’s cat
Distillery green and ocean drifting, weathered

Currents carry poetry
And random notes
And artillery shells
And lovers’ scrawl and letterings
Circumnavigating the core across the crust

Insulated in his own
Demand for self-identity
He never heard the laughing gulls above
Driven mad by the haunting tones of humpback whales, galactic
Distillery green and hoping for hurricanes and jagged reefs
Of some never-coming, ever-coming

Messiah
Lover
Audience