Jaded by weary contentment?
A too orderly agenda?
Fretting about abandonment?
Or a tailspin of surrender?
Suffering too much Overwhelm?
Can’t transcend the annual mire?
Try cold water swimming
the fix that’s sure to inspire
Or ocean row for charity
– unlock the bolder you
Parade veneers and sponsor font
and brave those high seas blue
Try cold water swimming
the wellness treat that does the trick
Glide eye-level with the horizon
So buoyant such a kick
Get that stinging serotonin hit
in synch with the ebb and flow
Lassitude and desolation
consumed by a numbing glow
Or if you’re drifting disillusioned
long-term prospects lame and blurred
That promised land’s failed to emerge
your imploring’s gone unheard
You’ve stood in dust for too long
Your hopes are gagged and bound
As far as the dimmed eye can see
all that rose is downed to hard ground
Devoid of scope to move ahead
Nothing there for you any more
Channels blocked haters howl no way through
no inbox, port, nor door
You thread along the chiselled edge
Can’t look back or ahead now
And those who prey on famished hearts
will stitch you up won’t care why or how
Just one last cast a final bid
to reach the towering shore
In storm-lashed surf in surging swell
There’s no space for you any more
Swamped flipped flung overboard
frenzied clawing for survival
Eyes blaze limbs thrash all flail and plunge
There won’t be any arrival
That gasping thunder panic
the guttering wails and bubbles
Submerged switch from life to nought
unblessed end of all those troubles
And that was how the story broke
Desperate lot ditched in seething swirl
Capsized corpses sink to sea-bed grave
as coastguard searchlights whirl
Added to the nameless brine-drowned dead
undocumented and current-borne
through stark thresholds to oblivion
where vast tides gape and yawn
And the ghosts stroke through the water
Scrambled molecules rinsed with sorrow
We sup the cup of mutual shame
set steely eyes on tomorrow
No solemn musing funeral chords
No tributes from those you knew
Bones gnawed by poison-addled fish
On an unknown beach: your soaked shoe
Cold water swimming
It’s the last thing you will try
Sorrows drowned the dream dissolved
Your moment now to die
And while I contrive lyric contrasts
Lounging pool-side with a beer
They drown by the hour somewhere out there
And rarely get too near
This composition is published as part of our Refugee: Poems of Courage collection, presented in collaboration with Poems Not Bombs, part of the Forest Poets collective.
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