I chase my own whale

and watch with anxiety

as every quivering arrow

I throw to bring the behemoth down

just bounces off the barnacled skin,

not even a pierced mollusc

gets wrenched apart

from the scale of the task before me,

No Ahab, it’s not about obsession,

not like Ahab, I am no Ishmael

trapped in the belly of the beast,

I can walk away without the foul

taste upon my virginal tongue,

my fingers dry, the ink

of the leviathan

the only stain, oozing blue

and the beast with two hearts

pulling in separate directions

I am not obsessed

but I am passionately possessed,

no great epic

whale hunt

to the murky shoulders

of the ocean,

just a preoccupation

to see what lays

its eggs in my ravenous soul.

 

I shall get no,

I do not want any,

I shall fixate upon no rest.

 

Ian D. Hall 2016