The Completed Renga

Here is the renga that I did with the folks from the Young Writers Society. We didn't quite follow all of the rules, and we goofed up with the syllables a couple of times, but overall I'm pleased with the result. :)

slow embrace, plunging:
tentacles and flotsam lull --
we collect the shells.
fish tails under broken hulls
fell voices in the currents
coral dances with
the movements of the sea waves;
fishes swim blindly.
tight-mouthed shells, settled, scuttled
on the beach like hulled warships
and we are the deep
beautiful; wild
since the sea was born
we hide treasures that
no man's eyes have ever touched
secluded in peace.
lantern skinned, studded
gills flapping like skirts; we sleep –
boneless, deep folktales
what god can match our splendour,
our revelry in the waters?
secretive meetings
held within the depths of seas
plighting a plot unheard.
friendless silence, plucked eardrums
sockets in the fogged slumber
we will not breathe air
our lungs fill with the cold water
Dark sea shapes we take
shut-mouthed, fastened down
like selfish little lockets,
we hoard our drowned tunes
the choir of transfigured souls
sweet voices among fins and scales
bodies once belonged
to land, now claimed by the sea,
brainwashed, lost and dead.
the sick girls, the yellow boys,
belly-up, they speak nonsense
but the sea takes them
it takes us and remakes us
we are its children
sculpting, remodeling us,
like clay, into something new
made to live our life
by rules foreign to our hearts;
confused, outraged we.
seek the comforts of the water
writhing in our new wonder
pollinate their dreams,
fat and ugly, like rough tongues,
stealing their rhymes, notes
succumbing to the soft touch
of waves and rolling currents
and purge them with oil, black salt –
monacled with sucker wounds
a drawling timepiece,
needled, trolled machinery,
like insect mouthparts
draining them of sanity,
replacing with misery
no longer human
skin changed for scales now
emotions far and gone
dolphins suckle at us
but it does not concern us
we are the new gods
we'll rule in our ignorance,
as if we own the untouched.
nothing holds us back
no man nor deity is our lord
we are beyond them
we are free, to wreck and ruin
who will punish for actions?
apocalypse here
from the depths of the blue sea
we have come to rule
to terrorize, overtake
the sea-lands we inhabit
let the sea rise up
trade in your legs for fish tails
become as we are
indifferent to those who
lived here centuries before
who stole, unrighteous
and died ignorant, with weight
of sins upon their hands.