The Drowned World

Whole communities are drowning
in their sleep. Tidal dreams
that nightly ebb and flow in waves
of alpha and delta
rhythms now rise and rage and break
in vast, black tsunami
to obliterate the shorelines
of our shared unconscious.

In autopsy, the grassless dunes
of cerebral cortex
are found to be washed smooth of thought:
memories eroded
back to birth, to amniotic
blankness, as primal fears
of climate change spark a reflex
from our dinosaur past.

Some people laze their lives in baths
or backyard swimming pools,
while more anxious souls take to sea
to seek one final crest
or one last lagoon: lacunae
where pallid hands of lost
commuters sway like seaweed fronds
in the under-currents.

Kopek is adrift in London:
the chimes of Big Ben sound
as muffled as the temple bells
of sunken Ys. He keeps
a journal for the benefit
of mutant mer-folk who
may not recall their ancestors:
that we once left the womb.