Wax and Wane

Low tide and I am grateful

Awakening to the sound

Of distant breakers fateful

Only my head above ground

.

I sink a little lower, come each sunrise

Of each day, now on my seventh

I try to loose from inhuman, inhumed vise

Spitting out grains of sand, misspending strength

.

My captors will come to nourish me

I know, again, before noon

Just enough, then some, to punish me

With but a daily mouthful of ruin

.

It's a game such no matter what I say

How much I plead as their entertainment

They just laugh, like every neck-high day

And enthuse in my prepared containment

.

Each twilight I watch the moonrise, a sliver of crescent

Waxing from yesternew on its monthly journey

It follows me in cruel precession incessant

Tidally locked to my tidal destiny

.

I fret the rising moon that comes each night

As so it waxes, my horoscope contracted

At celestial peak it will shine full bright

On my life and my story redacted

.

Full phase and red, blood brother

As waters recede, take, what's left of me

The same moon revolves to eclipse another

But I will depart, salted, sprinkled at sea

.

My judge and jury move on to their next

Judged and sentenced and dutifully addressed

Misdeeds misintepreted and misspun out of context

Duned and doomed with next tide's menstrual crest

.

The sea flows in for all, it's said

At the end, all still standing, will fall

Even those who sentence the dead

Ebb and flow and the water'll take 'em all