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