Order this writing in the book Need to Know Basis (redacted edition) (the 2014 poetry, flash fiction & short prose collection book)		get this poem collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

enjoy this writing from Paul Bellerive in the free 2019 chapbook: Tales Told to Friends (click on the front cover image or the title text to download the free PDF file)				You can also order this as a 2019 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback ISBN# book! Click on the book cover to order Tales Told to Friends as a book at any time!

Order this writing that appears in the one-of-a-kind anthology The Flickering Light the Down in the Dirt Jan.-June 2019 issues & chapbooks collection book (learn about this book, and order from Amazon online)		get the 366 page Jan.-June 2019 Down in the Dirt issue & chapbooks 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

A Myth, Perhaps

Paul Bellerive

Dark boulders on the shore loomed like giants
when I was a child and could imagine
the heroes and the monsters of ancient days
returned to separate land from hungry seas,
to ring us in, to hold and protect us
on our mystical, mountainous island.
The tablets stained with time and weather
beckoned from the depths of their dank cave;
placed there for safe keeping before there was time,
before the Titans died and descended
into the immeasurable depths of ocean
forever murmuring all around us.

My crippled grandfather knew the stories:
Before there was land there was Oceanus
he who dwelled beneath a soundless sea,
he who ruled over all the watery world;
and there was also Molitania,
the volatile queen of the underworld
cast below before time, before Oceanus.
After eons, mad with lust and loneliness,
Oceanus ventured beneath the waters,
forced his way into the hot underworld,
coupled wildly with Molitania,
and their volcanic climax formed our land.

Today the tourists laugh too loudly;
they hurry whitely from the wind-swept airport
to the palm-studded hotels on white beaches
shaded now by glimmering towers
reaching brashly into the vast heavens
where cottony clouds are scurrying
and disappearing at the rim of the world.
Merchants call from simmering grass hootches
dangling polished stones and gross, false idols,
idols never spoken of in the tablets,
idols created by cruel cynicism,
by those who have no sense of where they are.

In black waters of stagnant inland swamps
snow-white ibis and great blue heron wade
staring longingly toward crystal sea pools
where schools of fish flowed in rippling waves,
where blue-green ocean waters rolled gently,
where great brown pelicans dove from on high
like lightning bolts striking on the sea;
but now only shadows in dusky glades,
teeming with rank growth spun out of control,
steaming in twilight humidity
rife with predator insects and fat leeches
searching blindly for any drop of blood.

Indolent, angry and not knowing why
young men growing old in body and in mind
gather in airless, suffocating bars
simmering in stultifying, dank heat.
Trapped in anonymity, in shadows,
suffering from the unspeakable loss
of the silver sands and murmuring waves
loss of what they thought to be their birthright,
they sip stomach-rotting bar whiskey
silently enduring their sad exile,
alone together never admitting to
the cache of cracked and sullied shells at home.

* * *

She sat among rocks behind the beach club
where dancers wriggled beneath flaming bars,
where a steel band played on a moonlit deck
flickering in the swaying light of tiki
lamps purchased from online purveyors.
Beneath a red, satiny evening dress
her lithe, powerful body suggested
a stalking panther padding silently
and effortlessly through thick jungle growth.
The gold bracelets dancing around her wrists
caught and returned the light sending tiny beacons
from the darkness of the rocks out to sea.

Her last song sung; the band silent and gone;
the dancers exhausted, drunk at quiet tables;
the sea murmuring, murmuring, murmuring,
she turned her dark face to the orange moon
and told the story silently to the sea:
Dark boulders on the shore loomed like giants
when I was a child and could imagine
the heroes and the monsters of ancient days
returned to separate land from hungry seas.
But no more; the heroes and gods are ghosts
banished from the shore, from the mountains,
by usurpers come from beyond the waters.

Their fathers arrived before days were numbered,
before the hours were told by shadows;
they came in violence, with oil in barrels,
oil sucked from great leviathans
who once circled and enriched our land.
They too were driven off long ago, driven
like the birds, like the islanders
away from the shore, away from their birthplace,
driven like the defenseless natives
to make space for the towers, for the markets
for the slithering dancers and singers
performing like animals in a cage.

She rose, the breeze rising too around her,
and easily stepped out of the red dress
allowing it to crumple on damp sand.
The moon and the west wind caressed her body
fondling her as gently as a lover
overwhelmed by her exquisite beauty;
naked save for the dangling bracelets
she stepped across the cool sand to the sea,
strode into surf that seemed eager for her,
that seemed to lick and savor her as she moved;
“I am coming to you,” she sang softly
as Oceanus swelled with her return.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...