Dead Fish Laughing Poem by R. H. Peat

Dead Fish Laughing

Post Op. fried-egg and sliced-ham

Your squid ink knows how to talk
about death within the daylight.
You dredge up barbs on old scars,
like balled up rusty fishhooks.

The surface seems too far away
at times; when you need air and
you're swimming from the depths
with an aquatic and frantic fright

towards the silver light high above.
When this hiss burns and sizzles;
you reach the hard harpoon point.
You're a frogman in the living-room.

It's part of the messy exorcism,
when removing personal demons.
The cure is to dip yourselves
into your own blood and gasp.

That's what you do each day and
night, sucking your oxygen tube,
for a better life in pain and fear
to behold each blazing sunrise.



Notes:
© RH Peat 5/11/2019
Form: Free Verse: 5 quatrains/ 20 lines.
Published: England: Poetic Bond IX: — 2019
Willowdown Books IX 2019 Pg.126