O who will sing that rudderless ship
   that has lost her destiny?
     With her sails in rags
     and her lines in snags,
        -- the Ship of the Dead is free!

The captain lies in a coma,
  his hands clutch helplessly,
    and the shantyman chokes
    and wheezes and croaks:
       -- the Ship of the Dead is free!

The crew are extict and jolly,
  they gnaw themselves hungrily,
    and their black lips grin
    as the rigor sets in:
       -- the Ship of the Dead is free!

The pilot has smashed the compass,
  and tramples the sextant with glee:
    he erases the log
    and steers by the fog;
       -- the Ship of the Dead is free!

O the skeleton climbs the rigging;
  his sockets scan the sea,
    and he cries to the crew:
    No land in view!
       -- the Ship of the Dead is free!



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Cop­yr­igh­­t 2025 by Jon Corelis

joncorelis.com

The lady’s eyes are an ember of green. Would she take
any comfort remembering vanished dews? Would she care
for a draught of this liquor distilled from cobweb and moon?
Will she bite off love’s brief words with her tiny fox teeth?
Is she parched for the skeletal clatter of lunar rain?
I wonder if she feels I should decipher
the angular pitch of the chamber where she dreams
of a house with many faces like a crystal. Shall we review
the erotics of the knife’s edge? the network
of eternity that howls in the nerves? the memoirs
of a pool rippled by a slain magnolia at midnight?

Perhaps she will recall the ghosts
that crackled in her hair when she shattered the bowl of dawn,
the sinews of wild colts that sang on the mountain in the dawn,
the lone hyacinth that crumbled under her hand
in the mist of dawn.

I wonder if the milk of her ******* is the milk of adders,
or if the flint of her ecstasy chips
the cherried enamel from the basin of her smoldering trance.

Or perhaps she’d prefer to yield
the meteor of her exhaustion to the black sky of night.


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Cop­­y­r­­­ight 2025 by Jon Corelis

joncorelis.com

As I walked out in the streets of Manteca,
as I walked out in Manteca one day,
I spied a young cowboy asleep on the sidewalk,
when prodded from slumber these words he did say:

"You are wearing a Stetson, spurs, chaps, and a six-gun:
I assume then you must be a cowboy like me;
come sit down beside me and hear my sad story,
then try to guess which shell is hiding the pea.

'Twas once in the saddle I used to ride gaily,
albeit I had not a horse to my name,
but down in the basement my dad had a saw-horse,
so I rode a steed that could never go lame.

O bury me holding a King and five Aces
with a pint of good whiskey to keep my corpse warm,
and a pair of my custom made dice in my watch fob,
for I'm a young cowboy and I've bought the farm."




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Cop­­yr­­­ight 2025 by Jon Corelis

joncorelis.com

Big momma, turn on,
throw that switch to grow;
big momma, big momma turn on,
and let your waters flow:
you know you’ve got to show the circle
the way you move so fast and slow.

Hot poppa, stretch strong,
coverin’ the land and sea;
hot poppa, hot poppa stretch strong,
makin’ ev’ ry thing you see:
you know your momma’s gonna hold you
like the oak roots hold the tree.

Sweet sister, fly high,
and sing away the night;
sweet sister, sweet sister fly high,
like a starry silver kite:
you know your momma and your poppa
are gonna hold your strings real tight.

Little brother, sleep soft,
they’re watchin’ over you:
little brother, little brother sleep soft,
you know it’s all been done for you:
and when you surface from the night time
your dreams will shine on you.




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Copyri­ght 2025 by Jon Corelis

joncorelis.com

I was down in Tampico
on the way to Puerto Rico
when that green eyed blonde got free.
She was twenty and a killer
and I knew I couldn’t fill her
half as fast as she could empty me.

Her daddy was a preacher
and her mama was a teacher
so it hardly should have come as a surprise
when the hand she dealt
like the way she felt
turned out to be a pack of lies.

When we got to her isle
it took me quite a while
to figure out how far she’d try to go.
Her mariachi ****
drove me out of my wits
and her rhumba hips began to glow.

Now when it’s winter in the tropics
there are no forbidden topics
since there’s nothing that might not be true,
and when the sun goes to bed
then the comical dead
will let you know that their joke is on you.

That’s when I dropped the disguise
so she could look through my eyes
and I told this serpentine dame,
“You know, it sure is dandy
that your gun’s so handy
’cause I think your gonna call my name.”

Then I came out of my shell
like a bat out of hell
and headed straight into the dying sun,
and I called over my shoulder,
“Darling, maybe when you’re older
you’ll know why a man must run.

Now excuse me a while
to deconstruct your smile
while the flying fish cry ‘Olé!’
If you’re as good as you seem,
I won’t escape your dream
and I’ll be back next valentines day.”
 


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Copyr­ig­h­t 2025 by Jon Corelis

joncorelis.com

O that god would change me to a sea-bird,
soaring in the sunset,
joyously and free,
leaving all my sorrow
for my own tomorrow,
far beyond this lying world’s illusion.

I would fly away to that bright garden
past the ocean’s ending,
where eternity
nourishes the flowers
through their perfect hours
never touched by human life’s confusion.

To fly away, away, away, away, away on wings of wishing,

where the golden apples swell in ripeness,
and the fertile meadows
bloom abundantly,
bringing forth earth’s treasures
for the deathless pleasures
granted to the gods in calm profusion.


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--­ translated from the Greek
--copyright 2024 by Jon Corelis

No one should ever be treated by anyone
like I've been treated by you:

you think you're so cool
you're exempt from the rule
that you pay for whatever you do;

but the earth will turn
and the sun will burn
till the day you finally see

that no one should ever treat anyone else
the way that you've treated me!



-------------------------------------------------
Copyr­­­­ight 2025 by Jon Corelis

joncorelis.com