We feed on the murmur of limbs
We dine on seas between the dead brown,
And them
This is our sanctuary,
Our true north.
We came here in twos, pairs joint
And clipped to each other’s lapels but
Who are we?
We are the fishermen who cast nets
into the deep before the salami returns.
We are the farmers who flirt at
the sight of plantations
We are the sharecroppers, who
pick apart the land masses,
Dusting those shells for trophies
We hide them behind those sand
castles, or those houses made of
Montreal’s
They reek of sunshine and ruined
woman.
Perhaps this is her museum,
The only place where the weeds
have a scent, and ships lurking in
the distance,
waiting to be swept back ashore
There is a sailor who begins to
chant the Wellerman, those aboard
becoming songs for flight,
murmuring havoc
So now we run, fisherman, farmer,
sailor and ruined woman.
The time has come for us to unchain
ourselves from those blood-soaked
arithmetic shores, to free us from
those gutting winds of a now dead
earth.
Her people have spent centuries
dreaming of those good for nothing oil
drums and severed limbs to be sown
back together.
They have endured the very ballad of
seas, naive optimism, and joy for those
waiving sailors docking in our port for
one last time, before the bastards
ravage our Dahomey and make
sanctuary of us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Conor O’Nolan on Unsplash