No Escape, No Return
Siren scales flake and burn
I claw and scrape, sing and scream
A siren drying
Gasping in the noontime sun
The tune of captivity gradually fades
To a chant of liberation
☀︎⋆.ೃ࿔🧜🏻♀️🏖️*:・
Moisture is readily exchanged
With sizzling air, setting plumes of steam
Billowing from tail to hair
Slowly desiccating in
My scramble to escape
☀︎⋆.ೃ࿔🧜🏻♀️🏖️*:・
On flipper and elbow I must crawl
Salt crystallizes in sea green veins
As I wade into a merciless death
Despite all hope and fine polishing grit
☀︎⋆.ೃ࿔🧜🏻♀️🏖️*:・
Unable to fight the humorless gulls
Plucking scales off one by one
I toss them, glinting
In the firelight of futility
☀︎⋆.ೃ࿔🧜🏻♀️🏖️*:・
As the kittiwakes mock and taunt
Their laughing squawk
Uncannily mingles with
My tortured song
As the day dawns on this
Glistening mandala of harpy slaughter
Lines wrought of Iridescent flakes
A haunted shanty awash in spiraling melody
Pours across the shining shore
☀︎⋆.ೃ࿔🧜🏻♀️🏖️*:・
The tide constantly recedes
I never see the tree line
It continually creeps
Just out of sight, always out of reach
As I hobble on hand and fin
Towards the sanguine horizon
Tantalizing my sense of survival
Driven to persist in this fruitless Odyssey
☀︎⋆.ೃ࿔🧜🏻♀️🏖️*:・
My lifelong curse and castigation
To never reach the safety of
The calling sea
Never feel her aqueous caress
I hear her whispers
Her bewitching hymns
Yet I’ve been forced to survive
On just the rushing of the surf
The saline scent of oceanic brine
☀︎⋆.ೃ࿔🧜🏻♀️🏖️*:・
Predators may snap
The sun can scorch
I shall not die captive
Better I’d bake
Alone on the shore
K.B. Silver
About the Creator
K.B. Silver
K.B. Silver has poems published in magazine Wishbone Words, and lit journals: Sheepshead Review, New Note Poetry, Twisted Vine, Avant Appa[achia, Plants and Poetry, recordings in Stanza Cannon, and pieces in Wingless Dreamer anthologies.


Comments (1)
This is intense in the best way!🔥What hits me most is the refusal. Even if freedom costs everything, captivity isn’t an option. That kind of stubborn, almost wild self-preservation feels very human.