Honored to announce that my dark ocean poetry collection, As The Sea Turn Red, is up for an Elgin again. (This award has a 2 year window so one piece can be nominated twice.)

I don’t usually post snippets or poems here, but I’ve gone ahead and added one of the poems from this collection below.

FISHER KING

Speak to me now, Fisher King, of your glory dreams

As the fire snaps

As the wind screams

Tell me again the story

Of how these seas swallowed your ancestors

And how these waves took your bloodstained kings

Sodden tales drip from your cracked lips like venom

Waterlogged and pale

Golden dreams painted in watery death

I watch the ghosts raging in your eyes

I know you, castaway, as these shores knew your kin

You see your forebears in the whitecaps

Generations lost to the raging sea

Their blood flows through your veins

Their greed broke your fleet on this forgotten shore

When you dream, you see your ancestors

A line of mariners stretching back through ancient times

The rise and fall of the tide was in their blood

As it is in yours

But is it their truth or their retribution you suffer?

You were strong once, you were brave

And now?

Now your helpless words leave a stench in the air

And the changing tides take your redemption away

You are a trespasser here

You walk these shores like a god

Fine sand clinging to your sweaty skin

Your thoughts blister beneath the blazing sun

Your revelations burn against the sand

You do not belong here

You are no guardian

Apologies crack apart on your parched lips

Useless and weak

You buried your lies in aquatic madness

Chasing a spirit that exists only in your mind

Dismal is your redemption, a sorry excuse for valor

The ghosts fade away with passing storms and passing days

The tides roll out

Leaving only traces of the man you used to be