Victory Theme

She paid no mind to the airships and spacemachines, or really anything overhead. Her stoplights were long burnt out, all information free to superhighway on by without a single red brakelight. The Hubble Megascope was in disrepair, two more civil lawsuits had escalated into microwars and were subsidized to corporate militias, and many other sponsored and somewhat scripted new stories were breaking around the globe. She was not interested in any. She remained a victim of the Boredom Pandemic, medicated but terminal. There was no cure, but as long as they remained smacked out on hypercodone or 3c-MA, the afflicted hordes pleasantly and calmly accepted their state-funded way of life. After all, it was the Old Government’s fault the fatal disease existed anyway, created in the bio-eco wartech labs in some sociopolitical scuffle in the earlier parts of the millenium. Some people had moved into Local Space, some people lived or just worked in Outer Space, some even left the solar system to seek their fortunes in Further Space. Some, she, explored the space between minutes, a sixty second astronaut. There were more things than ever before, and just as many ways to get tired of them.

The trees were nine hundred feet too tall
to see the sun
that followed me across the summer and fall
The trees were nine hundred feet too tall
to see the moon
that waxed me to life and waned me to a crawl
The trees were nine hundred feet too tall
to ever climb
that I might see the stars and what they saw
The trees were nine hundred feet too tall
to dig up
the roots that keep me landlocked to the planet
The trees were nine hundred feet too tall
for any enemy
to ever find me and all that I entail
The trees were nine hundred feet too tall
for any animal
to stalk between and eat me in my sleep
The trees were nine hundred feet too tall
and the trees keep growing
winter, spring, summer, and all
growing nine hundred feet taller

Onwards to the wavesurfing new nations!
Towards blue horizons and glistening shellscapes!
No dirt for my roots to cling me to,
No clocks save the tide.
To sleep with the fish and wake with the seagulls,
To greet the day with wet worship,
The Moon my Father, the Wind my Mother, the Water my World:
A trinity ripe with divinity, a life source still living.
A sandbar lifestyle with plexiglass determination.
How soon until the seas rise?
How long is too long?
I want to sink these beaches,
I want to never know land again.
To sing praise of salt and shoreline,
To hear a victory theme of my ocean mind;
I will ride these waves of mine.

I have trouble sticking to a meter and I don’t try to rhyme on purpose. A pattern of “pairs” of lines that begin in the same words is the main feature. Every line begins with a one syllable word. The exception lines to this are the first two, which both begin with similar words, onwards & towards, but they both also end in exclamation marks, the only two in the poem. The line that begins with “the” does not have a paired line, but instead has 3 internal repetitions, breaking the pattern with an over-repeat but containing itself in one line, so the pattern is preserved outside of it.
Alliteration is also abundant in many lines, almost always only on “water” words, like wet, sea, water, salt. The line breaking this pattern is line 8, which is both a companion to the pattern-breaking line 7 but is also the pair to the pattern-maintaining line 9. This line also could have been two lines, so it pairs inside of itself as well. The alliteration in this line could still be argued to follow the water-word pattern, since it is referring to the combination of wind+moon+water, but if you don’t go with that, the alliteration is “reflective”, that is, l s s l. This standout line, which goes both with and against the pattern, also contains the only in-line rhyme (trinity/divinity). It is paired with the only non-water use of alliteration, so it still manages to maintain a commitment to the pattern.
So we get down to the end, where the final line at first seems to stand alone, unpaired. However, recall line 7. It broke the pattern of 2 by having 3, but it was about a trinity. Line 8 was paired to both it and the line after, keeping continuity with the 3. The last line begins like 12 & 13, so it is connected as a 3. It is separated from the other two by the two lines between, but wait! The last 3 lines all share end-rhyme together (line/mind/mine), maintaining both the trinity and the pair (To sing/ To hear).

You could also call it a pattern to stick to continuous imagery. The scene I tried to show was that of living on the ocean, living a surfer’s life but never actually leaving the ocean. Very Tao, very Be Here Now. No permanence, but security and peace in the assured ebb and flow of the tides and waves.

Onward to the wavesurfing new nations;
towards empty cities, coastline lifestyles
cottage communities on skyscrapers
sunken streets under the east coast ocean.
So long society, all we’ll want is free rides,
and how lucky, that’s all we’ll have.

-

I break the day like bread, a sacrament,
but you count your blessings like sheep,
always putting yourself to morning sleep.
So leave your head, don’t feed your bed.

-

To burn up in the atmosphere, I fear.
A falling star is meant to be wished on,
so steal my fire, take my light, I am done.

-

What a wet night to be human with you!
My glowing companion, keep keep dancing.
I am - you are - both here tonight, this night;
Our singular duty to sink to beats.