Smuggler's Boat

Migrants on the move from violence their only possession breath-space on a smuggler’s boat secured with back-bent harvests in pretzel-bent systems weight of crates of strawberries hoisted on hell-bent backs just trying to reach Spanish-shores’-east from Moroccan beach with a camel-mystique —the seaway west of Africa a rags-wearing-flotsam grave migrants on the move from Cameroon die —or survive a militia-cocktail blend of balaclava terror jihadists and bandits with morality mills low on grist infest desert sands like scorpions bullets sharp as cactus spines and male instruments of rape piercing bones and soft tissues and psyches instruments rejecting life instruments injecting horror migrants on the move find more violence migrants pray for food-filled days wasteland-vultures and water-rats prey on prayerful fearful like they’re bleating beasts men women and children herded onto a fishing vessel— a sickly casket too small way too small for all the men women and children oh how hollow-eyed babies cling to milk-less mothers bellies stinging with hunger eyes wringing til dry human smugglers grinning pockets overflowing with high tides of gold breath-space on a smuggler’s boat their only hope though distant shores stingy with dingy castaways– lantern’s light tries to melt their fright stringy muscles straining like ropes brined-eyes blaming the night for ambush shark-teeth-waves gnashing the hull maelstrom pulses swashing whitewashing vein walls just trying to cross just holding on just trying to live but the ravaging waves— waves with a savaging swing swing the frail boat with no sail swing a grim-reaper-boat with a dead motor swing a boat to fling its human cargo into thrashing switchblade waves knifing the belly-light out of the lantern cutting rag-wearers from the boat in unholy baptize gutting skies of far-sighted stars desperate gasps for air fill spaces between slap and splash of brown hands on water a child here a baby there slipping from slippery maternal grasps uglifying their faces displaced from their breath-spaces by death roll of the merchant-serpent they ride cold lips blush blue as cyanosis-seas fill sinking lungs suspended bodies writhe in fluid ballet til surrendering in tender mercy splendor like fetuses curling in midnight amnion —non-umbilical unbiblical migrants’ drowned-mouths-open screaming silent swells wear a tin-foil facade in morning tide sea-sins forgiven with christen of lavender light on lullaby currents they ripple toward that distant island corpses tossed and turned till ropey-muscles relaxed ~d ~r ~i ~f ~t ~i ~n ~g ~ like unrolled unmoored ribbons of kelp to Spanish-shores’-east on a seraph sea bodies populate sandflats rising up from a falling tide migrants on the move even in death reaching their final destination