Shipwreck Green

The green darkens like a bruised lantern, salt-washed.

Turner paints his sea towards a violent, fearsome frenzy

where verdigris veins braid with foam, and broken keels

list into a hungry abyss where light is swallowed whole.

This green is heavy and rich, like doubloons that sink

and sleep, a Charon that ferries destinies and keeps

tally when fingers loosen and voices slip away into the

deep, welcomed cold and silent onto Neptune's palette.

Under monstrous weight, the ocean folds itself into night,

a verdict-black that wrenches sound from frantic throats,

a portal through which the fates of men are sealed,

their very essence dissolved into nature's liquid canvas.

Shipwreck green chafes the senses and pricks at our fear.

It's an ominous, iridescent haunting, a premonition that

yawns, then rages, then makes the darkness eat the light.

A siren, luring men into the depths of our first beginning.