Give me a self-imposed seven days to write a poem, and I will spend the first eight of them narrowing down the critical idea, the ninth being reserved for making sure it’s misunderstood, and another six months to put off picking the words.
I’ve posted some poems here before (TUB #39, #42,) with some commentary following the poetry itself. I’m not adding commentary this time, as the trade-offs I explained therein still roughly hold true and in this case the cons outweigh that prose.
However, you’re cordially invited to flatter either my vanity (by commenting under this post,) or my discretion (by sending an email;) I'll be happy to clarify anything except the subject about which I’m being asked.
In a Different Place, in a Different Time
by none other than myself
The sea is the great pedestal of man, anon alit with derricks, skiffs,
and buoyed up and weighèd down through silty troughs of deep-sea rifts.
Panoramic views unfold from crow’s nests perched on proper masts;
Pandora’s box lies still, unspoiled, besmirched and stoppered at the hasps.
Alas, each atlas joined, assured the sailors’ artistry awaits,
expectant that their moral-coil’d loins abashedly abate,
must gathered in the chambers upon return from leave,
uniformly cleared at last when the livery crew could breathe,
must ice-break in the winter, over-mulled with mulled cider,
bound by strictures of scriptures of mild, dull writers.
Pound for pound, round for round, the ship was ailed
by the voyages recounted, none left out, from trip to tale,
as the laymen jested wryly over recent shirks of aisle—
but when the chaplain reprimanded them, his grimace
cast their expressions crashing down from smirks to smiles to sickness.
The commotion’s sudden silence drew the captain to the kitchens,
where he clarified the code of honor mariners were commissioned:
its litmus limits, lye, on either side of any isthmus;
it specified that deckhands only bear littoral witness.
So shrouded were these batches of debauchery in gloom:
singular souvenirs were dueled bodies left to bloom,
else no traces and no trophies from those whiled ten thousand hours
spent sampling sour perfumes and dowagers’ sweet flowers.
For they dourly departed, favoring corners of the world,
soft-spun, straw-stuffed fabric folded, sails unfurled
for untamed, uncharted waters, leaving lyre’s lilting chords
for namely sung, slurred shanties as they shambled back to board.
The counter-remonstration left the galley cleft in twain,
‘tween ill-mannered slattern-patrons and the battle-station-manners,
for the grievances had mounted, and each man had kept his tally,
since the peanut gallery’d fallen to the pirate fleet’s banners—
their own canvas cut to ribbons, then their profit slashed to ruins;
fresh-faced recruits replaced the martyred, trained sailors;
wounds lay unredressed by the impressed who washed up newest
and the weatherbeaten navy men still shaking in their boots
who feared errors in the quiver, fled from quarrelsome disputes,
and attempted in their tact to talk of different tacks to take—
yet the catchment-catechumens, to offset their disreputes,
viewed yellow, irredeemable, the hue to which they hewed.
And as even aship, asail, their mouths were filled with foam,
the carousers’ grog grew spittly with fervent bellowed throes,
forming notions among those who’d bled from shaves they’d thought were close
that the moment had arisen for a challenge for their home.
The rowdy men came running at the first shout, primed for battle,
and it seemed the tide had turned against the safer, patient plan,
but with the hatches battened as preparation for the passage,
the advocates of discipline had come to make their stand.
After words exchanged were threats, and blades were next to brandish,
waved like spelunkers’ torches with the aim to press advantage,
so the deadlock only darkened with their flourished sharp bouquets.
Those respectively respected stepped into center stage,
arms outstretched, proclaiming that a compromise be made,
but before much could be said— one dead-set drunkard swung an oar;
the tip struck the boatswain’s forehead, caught skin, ripped and tore;
he dropped to the deck, a river coursing from his temple,
and no eloquence could stop the pistol shots from drumming forth.
Bullets fired despite the pleas each party ease the tensions—
the trenchant temperaments held fast against their interventions—
then they all were taught what tempera meant to ants in trenches
as a stray spark struck stored powder, an explosion breached the larder
and the water roared in louder than their long-fermented ardor.
The ship sunk; their charter failed them only twenty miles from harbor.
Now stacked, bleached polyp sediments of incandescent light
cement electric edifice in new synthetic heights;
turbid tenure masks tenors of sirens’ calls
until the shifting song of hourglass-sand falls;
new ventures past the wreckage,
environed by horizon,
out past the maps and calendars,
look up to find—
Orion