The Med is a graveyard.

[JohnS]

I haven't posted, or indeed written anything, for a while, but this came to me unbidden today

All feedback welcome


The Med is a graveyard.



Crying underwater, salt mixes with the fresh,

an unholy alchemy, dissolving with the rest.

My body drifts

weighed down by the cloth I hold,

in my hands a funeral wreath,

a birthday suit, sodden, full of light.

The weeds, the sea-weeds

caress my puckered skin

they wrap me in their bladderwrack adoration

Gently flagellating, parting like the sad

Magician’s curtains, to reveal a host,

a flock of ragged tourists, floating just above the

grey, grey dance floor, dismal toes describing

arabesques through the silt of a thousand expeditions,

clasping their dreams to their chests like children.

Sometimes, just clasping,

their children.

Milk eyes stare in blank accusation

of my misremembered life

I never knew the sea, the sea

had so much hope and misery

buried deep down where

the salt and fresh collide.

Hi,

I'm sure someone more qualified than I will be along to give you a more informed critique, but in the meantime I have a few comments:

I don't get the salt mixing with fresh, or colliding, situation which seems to be crux of the poem. 

I've read the poem a few times and whilst it reads well, I think, I'm struggling with some of the detail. This body sinking into the sea is holding a funeral wreath and also, it seems, a cloth. I had assumed the body was enclosed in cloth, but the next few lines reject that impression - birthday suit, puckered skin.

The description of the seaweed and the sea floor with the tourist bodies is very effective.

I'm clearly too thick to grasp the meaning, but I hope some of this helps.