Long Poem Sleeping At The Bottom Of The Sea, Brian McGackin
I dreamed first of dryness
a lie I told to cover
the damp.
you don't know what dry is
the dream whispered.
you haven't been dry in ages of the deep.
you leap from the waves wishing to fly and the water never leaves your back.
your scales are heavy with the weight of every ocean swum.
if you dried you'd die.
My second dream was a joy
quickly forgotten.
In my third dream I relived
my waking nightmare but with
minor variations
a moth
a motorcycle
an otter
another ocean.
This dream blended to a new
one running through shallows with
always the deep at my heels.
It was the water that
whispered now beneath my feet
accusing me of crushing
sea stars and renaming
ancient mangroves and stealing
the homes of respected
crustaceans.
I reached the shore but a vine
caught my neck and cursed my
ancestors.
I didn't know
I choked.
I didn't know.
I was sorry but didn't
say so.
I woke up gasping but it
was a fifth dream where I wrote
lies to cleanse myself without
water.
I would not even permit
a bedside glass and my mouth
was ash so hot a crust of
teeth and tongue.
I became convinced of the
benefits of drowning.
There were many more dreams each
a new horror of the deep
alongside a comfort that
they were better than waking.
I died in one dream but a
squid-haired seraph forbade it
and sent me back.
But the living wouldn't
welcome me sank my rotting
bones as a witch until the
light couldn't reach them and the
dreams ended in blackness.
And I woke so slowly I
was never sure it ended
was still unsure as I rose
from the bottomest bottom
to my feet as I slowly
expelled the hidden air left
in my burning lungs eager
for the light I abandoned.
I am still unsure now still
still if the dream is over
or if I remain
sand-shrouded in my trench.
Brian McGackin is the author of BROETRY (Quirk Books, 2011) and IN CASE OF DEATH (Not a Cult, 2018). He has a BA from Emerson College and a Masters in Poetry from USC. He lives in Los Angeles, where enjoys Guinness, comic books, soccer, and classical music.