Oxygen pulled from lungs compressed
Light drowned in depths never expressed
Black salt water currents send minds spinning
To swim up to warmth is its own form of sinning
Drink deep its sour sting and never be filled
Taste its burn and know your ills
The biting cold is less than deserved
Gravity grasps you to its deepest reserves
Problems cannot bubble to the top
If the liquors thick pour is never to stop.
Posted Jul 3, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC · edited
In my first reading I hadn't figured out that this poem was about drinking or alcoholism. The allusions are well veiled, and I love the reveal in the very last line. The form of rhyming couplets is well structured, but breaking each couplet up into its own stanza may be more effective than just one long sentence/stanza. The sense of hopelessness and needing alcohol to survive even though it is killing the narrator is a good story, and it takes the "drowning your problems in alcohol" narrative to a unique perspective of someone who knows its bad, but cannot stop. The imagery of the ocean aligns perfectly with the title Sink and I totally thought that "Drink deep its sour sting and never be filled," was about sucking saltwater into the lungs. Great imagery, great last line, great poem!
It's also about sinking deeper into depression, how it feels cold and out of your control. I wrote a paragraph about how depression only makes you want to feel worse a few years ago I nicked the idea from.
The most peculiar habit of people is the irresistible need to torment themselves during periods of grief. They feel a masochistic desire to punish themselves for the worst crime of all: helplessness. They find the source of the depression and burrow deep into those dark blue lacquered waves to feel the emotion in the most offensive and raw form possible. It's an addicting drug, that depression. Feeling your entire future go out of view, blown away like so much sand on a great mountainside overwatching an endless ocean, the endless powerful waves eroding the rock until the side is as sheer as a freshly dug grave. Until the only thing you can do is just live in the agonizingly sweet seconds that pass so slowly yet far too quick. As if the world is eager to leave the lost in its tracks, bulldozing its way into the unbearable future. The next week as incomprehensible as the next million, as if you aren't going to be there to see it, instead being left in the numbing wake. They spend hours finding any tool to dig deeper into the dark waves, photographs that taunt, soft music that gouges, souvenirs of the times gone past, and the most effective tool of them all, their own mind. Ripping into their delicate psyche with memories, insults, and pity until they are left in shreds. Shredded down to their most vulnerable selves. All their defensive walls smashed from behind. Left lashing wildly and futilely at anyone who comes near
2017
Wow, I love this writing and your poetic interpretation of this long-form paragraph grants it a whole new meaning for me. Thank you for the explanation, and please keep writing! You are talented and I'd love to read more of your work.
i post most of my work on this subreddit, so its all on my account
this exactly discribes it for me.. it grows too beautiful then your lost
I really like this one, I think you could break them up a bit into stanzas. It gets off to a great start with "Oxygen pulled from lungs compressed", my favorite line is, " Black salt water currents send minds spinning"
Hey I really enjoyed reading this. Great rhymes throughout . I like how you conveyed depression in these lines with great imagery. Looking forward to read more of your work.
I appreciate it man. Thanks for taking a look through my account
Anytime! :)
After reading the other comments I figured out the poem was also about depression and alcoholism. On my first read, I assumed it was about literal sinking, and on my second, a lot of the symbolism started to make sense. This is a very well-written poem with a lot of symbolic depth to it. Very good!