Drawing Back, a poem by BW Derge

by | Oct 30, 2024 | Poetry, Writing

Drawing Back (in the Sand) Poem by BW Derge

"Drawing Back" is a poem from the upcoming collection of poems, "The Sun Will Eat You Too" (2024) by BW Derge - all rights reserved by author - protected by copyright 

Drawing Back

Let me retreat

And tell the king

I’ve given up on this shit-

-

There is too much waiting

For the right word to appear

And like a bird at five in the morning,

Its beauty never comes

-

The King from Poem "Drawing Back" by BW Derge

Until it aggravates maggots trying to doze off,

I wanted the song when I wanted it-

Not now, go away,

Let me retreat away

From the stacked isopod identities,

-

Give me my solitude.

Tell the king I’m no longer here

To be the jester or the blind follower

Or the rooster,

I don’t know what I am or where I belong

So I sit on the sand,

-

The miniscule grains of infinite uncertainty

Separated and conjoined

With an even larger ocean of doubt-

There will be no conquering this

Or outliving this-

Finding the answer or truth like buried treasure

Is improbable and therefore

Not worth the effort,

Sitting in the Sand Drawing Back poem

-

Stop digging your grave,

Seeking a bunch of gems that don’t exist.

Just sit and contemplate the mysteries

That can’t be solved

Until you’re a skeleton buried,

Just as lost as any hypothetical treasure

That might dwell deep under the sand,

Never to be discovered,

-

So drink like a sailor until your liver is nothing

But a stray starving cat

Seeking one last fishbone

Before choking to death,

Leaving the decomposing feline corpse

To be washed out by a storm,

-

The fire whiskey reminds me

Of the little discrepancies

Gnawing at the nervous spinal root

-

At the base of the neck

Until there is nothing to do but be rude

And show how scorned you are-

Remind the world of how petty

A monster can get

When he doesn’t even but half understand

The realities around him-

But there is no key or legend

On this sensory map outline,

-

Pirate monster from Drawing Back poem by BW Derge

The markers are of masked pain

And nothing else,

No big red diagonal intersecting lines

Indicate where any gold lies-

There are only big black death circles,

Filled in with dark ink,

Saying this is where the uncertainty began,

And this is where you got lost,

-

This is where you told the king you retreated,

So you got banished, but forgot-

You thought it was a choice to be here

On the beaches

But this is exile, this is prison-

You are the farthest thing from free,

So please-

-

Let me retreat.

Back to simpler solitude

Where no sniper of misconstrued memory

Is waiting lurched up in a tree somewhere,

Holding the trigger,

Going to shoot whenever he pleases,

-

Pierce my peace

With the thorny thoughts

About all the temporal stuff I have lost-

I want to enjoy being lonely again,

I want the thoughts to stop spiraling

-

Around your visage,

I want the emotional vat to stop concocting

Its own potions

And just make cold beer to drown the heart in-

So finally consciousness and life can slip away

With no regard for past crimes-

Tell the king I’ve retreated

-

And he never knew about me at all-

What truth remains has been thrown

To the waterfall waves at sea,

Never to be recovered

-

abstraction of poem Drawing Back by BW Derge

Or salvaged

Or rebuilt-

It will disintegrate,

And be gone forever, great.

And that’s it.

© USA

written by BW Derge, copyright protected, all rights reserved 2024

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Drawing Back (in the Sand) Poem by BW Derge

Drawing Back poem by BW Derge

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