Reading your poem felt like swallowing seawater in the middle of an existential monologue, burning, bracing, and oddly clarifying. It depicts the void and it embodies it, with a rhythm that feels like drifting, adrift, not directionless, because there’s intent in the surrender. What struck me the most was the bitter elegance of defiance: the choice not to hope, but to name the water home, a sovereign act of survival pretending to be madness. That’s where I found a new nuance, not just the tragedy of the void, but the creativity of the lost.
Because when the world disintegrates, language doesn’t retreat, it rebels. Drawing borders where none exist, naming ghosts, conversing with mist. The poem reminds me that even when nothing holds, naming still does. It’s a cartographer’s cry from within the chaos: if no maps are left, I’ll make one from memory, inked in salt. And that, to me, is the most human thing imaginable.
Thank you Tamara 🥹🌊 for reading & for also sharing with me your experience … which gave me additional meaning & clarity I did not see. Your writing always does.
“not directionless, because there’s intent in the surrender.” - true, I had forgotten
“a sovereign act of survival pretending to be madness” - the creativity of the lost is all one can do in the Void, to make meaning out of it. So I will tell the Void: if you encompass me indefinitely, I will make meaning out of it, as my surest escape!
It is much like the prayer “don’t lead me into any danger that I can’t transform”
Also you reminded me of a story Sting told (I think I read it in a Gordon Sumner (aka Sting) biography. He was once accosted by a vagrant who was harassing & yelling jibberish to him. Sting decided the only way to ameliorate the situation was to act crazier than the homeless man. So he looked up at the sky and yelled “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the Sun!”
Reading your poem felt like swallowing seawater in the middle of an existential monologue, burning, bracing, and oddly clarifying. It depicts the void and it embodies it, with a rhythm that feels like drifting, adrift, not directionless, because there’s intent in the surrender. What struck me the most was the bitter elegance of defiance: the choice not to hope, but to name the water home, a sovereign act of survival pretending to be madness. That’s where I found a new nuance, not just the tragedy of the void, but the creativity of the lost.
Because when the world disintegrates, language doesn’t retreat, it rebels. Drawing borders where none exist, naming ghosts, conversing with mist. The poem reminds me that even when nothing holds, naming still does. It’s a cartographer’s cry from within the chaos: if no maps are left, I’ll make one from memory, inked in salt. And that, to me, is the most human thing imaginable.
Thank you for this wonderful poem!
Thank you Tamara 🥹🌊 for reading & for also sharing with me your experience … which gave me additional meaning & clarity I did not see. Your writing always does.
“not directionless, because there’s intent in the surrender.” - true, I had forgotten
“a sovereign act of survival pretending to be madness” - the creativity of the lost is all one can do in the Void, to make meaning out of it. So I will tell the Void: if you encompass me indefinitely, I will make meaning out of it, as my surest escape!
It is much like the prayer “don’t lead me into any danger that I can’t transform”
Also you reminded me of a story Sting told (I think I read it in a Gordon Sumner (aka Sting) biography. He was once accosted by a vagrant who was harassing & yelling jibberish to him. Sting decided the only way to ameliorate the situation was to act crazier than the homeless man. So he looked up at the sky and yelled “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the Sun!”
And the man dispersed.
Here’s to sovereign acts of survival 🥂
🙏🏻 🌞
And here’s to more stunning poetry! We are artists.