Full Fathom Failure

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

The Marianna Trench of memories glows

With phosphorescent creatures in your mind.

The psychoanalytic prober barely knows

The depths of nightmare beasts that slither blind

Through osmium-weight waters underneath

Your consciousness.  A Freud or Jung would lapse

In fathoms.  Deepest dreaming slots bequeath

Uncanniness, Saint Peter’s haunted apse

That scrabbling saints cannot escape without

Permission granted on the doctor’s couch.

It isn’t normal sinners forced to pout.

It’s sinful saints pinned down in urgent slouch.

  They’re Judas saved from hanging tree but not

    Quite, consciousness forever saved but fraught.

© Phillip Whidden