Men at Sea

Picture credits: Gabrielle Rogers, @shipinbottles.com

I write you letters

Brown paper boats

that float on tears

The men at sea

understand tragedy

I make an impossible bottle

of your promises

The sails never stand wind

And all the men at sea

understand tragedy

I scream from the hulls

neither finding an anchor

nor home in these islands

A tempest lashes inside

paper tears bottles break

The men scream with me

Love goes under to end

the sailors cross obscurity

The men at sea

finally understand tragedy

like you never will.

---

-samjam

I wrote this poem today morning and I'm so proud of it that I've decided to explain it.

Or at least throw light on a few things I was particular with.

"I make an impossible bottle

of your promises"

An impossible bottle is the thing from the picture above; the amusing thing to me about the object is not how the big ship goes inside the small opening (a seemingly impossible thing, hence the name). What amuses me is that once the ship goes in, it can never be taken back; that is- unless you break it. Which sounds so much like a promise. Here, the impossible factor nods to the ridiculous idea of bottling promises.

"A tempest lashes inside

paper tears bottles break"

In stanza 4, 'paper' is not capitalised, insinuating it to somehow be a continuation of the previous word 'inside'. Here, 'inside' not only refers to the turbulent water pouring into the ship, but also the storm of feelings penned on the paper.

The same weird mix of enjambment (sentences that don't end in one line) and polysemy (words or phrases that contain two meanings at once) can be seen in the word 'end' in the same stanza. It refers to both the end of love AND of the sailors aboard.

"Love goes under to end

the sailors cross obscurity"

Another polysemy (a proper one this time) is the phrase 'cross obscurity'. In addition to being a euphemism for death, (tying in with the earlier mention of end)

it is also referring to the sea men (hehe) overcoming-incomprehension aka understanding.

"The men at sea" & "I write you letters"

Of course, there are my favourite poetic devices, repetition (self-explanatory) and apostrophe (not to be confused with the punctuation mark- an apostrophe is when the speaker addresses a person not present in the poem itself), as well.

These two devices can also be found in my previous poems- 'I Laugh' and 'Your Fort' respectively. Both of which are in this very website for you to check-out :D

I spent quite some time breaking down poetic devices, if you learnt something new I'd be delighted to know. Pleaseeee let me know in the comments or through chat (message icon in the lower right corner of the page) if you enjoyed this analysis.

Thank you for reading this far, toodles!