In The Depths Of Darkness (Poetry)

Desolate

Bound and fettered,
His heart curls in thunderous waves,
Before the galleys of one thousand
Slaves, he looks into his fate of fiction
Ruined but told in modern days,
From where his body may finally
Lay.

Gazing upon his bronze skin, slick
And rippling, the searing heat
Crawling under his billowing rags.
The chained oars, a pull and drag.

The winds whipping up the waves to
The beat of his master's drum.
His aging wrinkles worn by salt and
Time, ground deeper and left so
Numb.

Below the dying embers on the
Wings of his demise, pride rears his
Sullied head.
Even as his body falters, weak,
Feeble and underfed.

Brackish dew melting into his raw
Wounds of the leather whip, his
Flesh alluding to its accuser drip by
Drip.

Their churlish sense of clemency,
Dipping with each rise and fall.
By design or the divine he yearns to
Win once and for all.

To rid himself of these symbolic
Shackles, weighted down.
Sentenced by those wreathed in
Laurels, under the guise of a worthy
Crown.

Beneath fevered illusions dreams of
Freedom blossom and bloom.
Alas locked inside his heart, those
Imaginings fester amid the dark
Dank gloom.

From athwart the glare of empty
Eyes, his present days do unfold,
Sadistic souls; their guardians hiding
Behind smiles so bold.

Emanating spite and greed, where
Hostile intentions love to breed.
Tethered and tied by manacles of
Three, side by side they row coursing
Through an unending sea.