I can feel the storm coming.
She’s breathing, she’s swallowing;
Harrowing, burying, irksome and worrying.
I count a tally on my fingers,
Twelve knots of life in figures,
Before the ship’s left to the elements and its crew, left for dead,
Left as God, left to God.
Buffeting, preying on the weakest,
Our cabin boy needs a newer bucket to skewer in.
Harrowing, burying, irksome and worrying;
Waves rising above us, below us;
Around us, inside us,
The flames of life don’t like to be quenched.
We’ll fight the bite of the northern winds,
Clench our teeth and spite the colder waters that that wind brings.
We seamen will spite the sea,
Curse the boats tallow ground, greased with the foam of the vortex we surround ourselves with.
Now, the men pray to God,
Pray to mammon,
Tearstained, our cabin boy screams to Allah
But only God’s sea can save us...
Breaking against our little boat,
And with every collision, angered more and more at our little float,
Whose place it isn’t to be here;
Bashful, unanswering, unapologetic,
Fancying rather, colliding until we sink and wander blindly into its vast blue ink.
Singing harmonious,
Siren’s, some men hear and few have glimpsed.
The sea called the murderous, voracious men from their mother’s wombs
For they swim to riches from the youth of that age,
And come back youthful still but torn at every page;
Rotten and born, surreal from the storm:
A seaman’s tales a tale to tell,
Of a part of heaven, sharing depths with hell.
They come back, not happy but ever wise.
Wizened like the earth that lies deep inside.
The calm bottom of the sea;
Where, if ever they would tell their mysteries, they would be.
