Wreckage Report (Sextant Deconstructed)
Who charts this
wr
eck?
(My inner compass spins, a frantic needle, lost to any guiding star.)
This vessel, I, where sorrow overbrims,
a foundering
vertigo,
both intimate
and
far.
The world? Unbalanced—
(skewed, storm-scarred, its charts unjust)
Yet, I endure—I breathe—though hope is dust adrift.
Indifferent eyes. The chill.
A
sea
of
disbelief
where documented pleas
(decades unreckoned, Millie’s warmth now still, a solace memory lost among the shoals and trees
of a forgotten year, no landfall found)
find no safe harbour. No shore. No ease.
All cherished things—
(mere flotsam).
I walk on paths
so
shattered,
so unplumbed,
none can chart my pain,
each step a trial by f i r e, a burning, constant flame.
The powerful? They
wat
ch.
(Their hands are folded, calm from their high deck).
Their coffers
swell.
(I bear the crushing blame, the water's claim).
Long days I fight this ceaseless, grinding weight—
these shackles forged of institutional sh a m e.
I seek out havens.
(Compassion’s gentle, guiding light,
a beacon hoped for in this endless night)
For corners where the truth
might dare to speak its name.
Instead: these hollow forms, these systems b u i l t
on breaking spirits, fanning despair’s
fl
a
me.
My evidence ignored, unread, unseen—
a logbook lost, while hunger gnaws.
(A fading, desperate claim).
If those who rule—
(and turn their gaze aside from this
capsizing
fate)—
Why not complete this ruin suffering laid bare?
A cleaner end.
(Than silence where they hide, abandoning the sl ate).
The noose of their neglect, it tightens... If you look away,
at least let honesty
attend my last des p a i r.
So let me lie.
(Where truth, at last, prevails, beyond the ocean's swell).
Earth below; above, the watching skies.
No more false comfort, no more whispered tales—
Just peace.
When this exhausted essence flies,
no longer tossed by wave or cruellest play.
When one sharp, silent
mer
cy
would light a clearer, final way.
(no star)
Author's Notes/Comments:
Navigating the Wreckage: Three Experiments in Fractured Form|
The poems that follow represent a deliberate descent into the architecture of breakdown, not merely as subject matter, but as methodology. Where "Static & Starfire" traced the contours of crisis through recognisable poetic forms, these three pieces venture into territories where language itself begins to buckle under the weight of what it attempts to carry.
In "Echoes in Ice," I've allowed repetition and ellipsis to mirror the crystallisation and shattering of thought under extreme duress. Words become brittle, breaking off mid-sentence like conversations interrupted by the sound of cracking. The poem's structure mimics the way consciousness fractures when pushed beyond its limits—each fragment both separate and part of a larger, increasingly unstable whole.
"Soliloquy at the Breaking Point" experiments with the parenthetical voice—that secondary consciousness that comments, questions, and doubts whilst the primary voice attempts to articulate its final testimonies. These aren't merely asides; they're the competing frequencies of a mind at war with itself, the static that interferes with transmission even as it reveals the sender's deepest uncertainties.
Finally, "Wreckage Report" pushes typography itself to the breaking point. Words split and scatter across the page like debris from a foundering vessel. The very act of reading becomes a salvage operation, requiring the reader to piece together meaning from the fragments. When traditional language fails to map such territories of despair, perhaps only broken language can chart the coordinates of the wreck.
These are not comfortable poems. They demand patience, a willingness to sit with incompleteness, and an acceptance that some truths can only be approached through their own undoing. They exist in the liminal space between communication and silence, where meaning emerges not despite the fractures, but through them.
I offer them as cartographic experiments—attempts to map regions of human experience that resist conventional charting. Like all experimental work, they may fail more often than they succeed. But in their failure, perhaps, lies their truest accuracy.
In this final piece, typography becomes meaning. As the speaker's navigation tools fail, so too does the structure of language itself, scattering across the page like debris from a wreck.
