Prayer of the Drowning Man Copyright © Paul Jenkins 2008

"I'm riding on the crest of a wave!"
he cries, far out at sea,
as the swell lifts him up
to view the flotsam of the years:
the left-overs of a convenience meal,
polystyrene trays and plastic cup;
the bludgeoned body of a seal,
a forgotten landmine,
a motherless child,
an aborted foetus
laid aside,
the extraordinary rendition of a tortured soul,
the remains of a depleted uranium shell.

The roar of cheap flights overhead
drown the siren calls within the wind,
the clatter of debris in the waves
the foam and clamour on foreign shores.
"I'm over the moon!" he calls
above the manipulative whine
and constant drwal
of encroaching traffic from onshore.
"I'm flying high!"
as plummeting down the far side
of a deep depression he falls,
sucked round
                   and
                         down
in ever-decreasing circles;
cigarette butts,
                      coke
and empty
                lager cans,
spinning
             in his wake.

"I'm swimming in a sea of troubles,"
he weeps,
discarded remnants of the past,
spent cartridges and lead shot,
a battered galvanised bucket,
far ahead,
his legs, caught up
in a sheath
                 of plastic film,
arms weighed down
with plastic
                 carrier bags,
a used condom
                       across his nose,
a faece
biodegrading
                   between his toes.

"I'm drowning!"
he weeps,
as up
and up
involuntarily
he's thrown
hook-line-n-sinker
astride the back
of a harpooned whale,
so high
the sea and sky merge
where he hangs
suspended in the air
as all about him turn.
"Oh save me,
 save me please,
 from the excesses of anger,
 and the obsession of greed,
 the rendered carcass
 in an herbivore's feed,
 from creatures
 caged for our delight
 and our insatiable appetite,
 the empty barrel of nuclear waste,
 child prostitution,
 and adult slavery,
 gas chambers,
 genocide,
 the Ku-Klux Klan,
 radiation
 found in the Cornish sand."

"No more, no more!"
we beg.
"Please God, no more!

 God save us!
 God save us all!
 God save those of us
 who are all at sea".