The Seafaring King
Of blunt savagery,
Does the blister lipped captain
Ready an emery throated appeal,
To God in His abiding gold encircled sphere,
That He may dial down
The kaleidoscopic rays,
And the flame licking fury
Of the punishing sun.
For the jagged shoreline haunts
With hallucinatory menace,
The quaking wooden ship
Whose crazed carriage
Weaves a desperate throttling fit
Of sporadic pitch,
Into the heart of brackish tempest
Below night’s ether
And fathoms of inky abyss.
The ship pirated of mercy
Cuts through deathly spell,
While the sea’s murmured mockery,
Laughs a dark riot,
With rattling verve
And fevered fuss,
As Poseidon’s shabby plaything,
Ensnared to liquid tumult,
Becomes a cornered desperado.
The bleary eyed captain
Skin swollen to gaudy rose,
Takes wavering sight
Through dim taint of saltwater,
And faintly spies,
A flickering lighthouse,
Eremitic temptress,
Oceanic illuminant,
Hope’s frail seduction,
Across the murky leagues,
Beyond the taunting depths.
This crag clutched sea finger,
Weak light a loop of dull fire,
Stands dressed in her ancient stripes,
Weathered and tressed
In a blister of gulfweed tangle,
This faithful mariner’s torch.
Now livens the captain’s charge
To posit the bow
Towards this delirious course,
The death rattle groan
Of the splintering ship,
Deaf to the ears
Of the seafaring king.
And with frenzied prune hands,
The captain steers
Fate’s whining wheel
In monomaniac vim,
Eying the suffered misty horizon,
And the captain remains,
As fixedly staunch
As great Ahab himself,
Until the terrible ruse,
Of the wreck does him in.
Now there are those,
Who tell their tales
Worn down with age
And besieged of sentiment,
But still yet a few,
Crowned with cloud hoary heads,
Will still dare to speak
Of that daring great ship,
Romanced in the crosshairs
Of delirium’s dream,
That was dashed into dust,
At the saltwater feet,
Of the mighty and unforgiving,
Siren of deep.