The Ship Of Fools

The Ship Of Fools

The roaring people call us the ship of fools

They who chain themselves to what they think secure

They who are always just about to do the usual

Trivial events from their garrotted minds

Raising their faces like rats to curse the moon

A cosmic joke

By Jupiter! Stand close boys! trim the sails!

We the ship of fools sail the waves, be them blue or green or black as
night or grey as wolves

Voyages beyond the tedium of uniformity

No compass, charts, sextants, no guide, no course to set

We are mad with awe, distracted with awe, defying fate

Stretching hope, steeped hope

Ghost winds blow an abstract dance in the mind

This isn't a ship of regret, but a ship of glory

The ship rolls with shifting dreams

Unfettered loose cannons in the hold

Subterranean men of our mark, dandies and madcaps and artful dogs, a catch and crazy crew, mariners of the mind; no flat worlders here!

We splash and cut and mix and match, by eye or math or randomness

We bring light, and sound, and colour, and line, to poetic truth

These words on a wing

Fighting to be heard like a note in a chord

Rather out of breath, a distance from the truth

Buffeting against the boundaries of this poem's form

But, a running brain

The rhythm of blood

The fanatic's gleam

Speaking in cool Creole

Total this and total that

Arrow eyed

Imposing form on flux

Ponderous beauty

Strike a light

O turn me on and turn me up

Chris Whitley, – Berlin 2018