A hot old pipe rested in the old  sailor’s mouth
As he overlooked the sea, salt air
The wind in his blue eyes and his gray hair
He had seen many a storm in his time
But each one of them had a different rhyme
Like that of an old  sailor’s song

He sang of Sirens, with bodies of ocean
And of the monsters that lurked in the deep
With all the sunken boats they were to keep
And the skeleton of a siren of sand
With soft lips, and  softer hands
A  sailor by the name of Lars

But Lars was nothing but a memory
A candle that had gone out for the night
Or a brave old soldier in his last fight
But most of all, he was but a minx
Something as mysterious as a sphinx
This is about the sailor, isn’t it?

This old  sailor with leather hands
It was a book with stories that filled pages
Some that brought joy and others that rages
Some of it was fake as unicorns or lies
Others that were true, like the sea and skies
How can you tell a lie from your eyes?

This story starts long ago, before many know
The old  sailor was a young man
His hair was smooth and his skin was tan
His parents wanted him to be a scholar
But his ambitions grew taller and taller
His ambition to see the water in full

The S.S. Enola smelled of *** and men
A few had cards, others with books
Many had nets and hooks
“There seems to be a singer”
Some said, nodding towards the wringer
So the S.S. Enola hides under the deck


The young  sailor tries to cover his ears
But he heard lyrics of such sin and lust
Of bodies you could never quite trust
But he saw it before his very eyes
As if the devil, himself in disguise
The young  sailor felt a pit in his gut

A pit like that of a ripe  peach
The sprays sweet juice when you eat
Who in the earth needed to be neat?
When a face of soft peach fuzz was here
The young  sailor was wet, not of tears
Was this hell gripping him by the neck?

“My name is Lars” The beauty said.
The young  sailor stared for too long
The voice was like an all too known song
Of love that kept giving with a tock
The tics and tocks of a wooden clock
Of a love that was forbidden

The young  sailor felt heat and desire
As a loose red cloth around naked shoulders
That made the young  sailor’s heart a boulder
But not the shoulders that were soft and round
The ones of his fellow sailors, hard and sea-bound
Ones of men, perhaps just like him

Lars just smiled and the young  sailor gasped
“You must be a siren, a trickster of desire”
The young  sailor felt like a wildfire
The other sailors heard and crowded Lars
Stripping his clothes as if showing scars
There wasn’t any scale nor a fin

But, they grabbed Lars by the ankles
And dragged him to the deck
They grabbed him by the neck
There was a beg and a plea for life
That’s when the captain pulled out a knife
And then that Lars was no more



He was thrown over deck like rotten food
His body sank without a worry
And the young  sailor wasn’t in a hurry
He could have saved the man known as Lars
He never had to join those tragic Greek stars
Lars could have been his to touch

But that’s not what happened
And it never, ever can be
How much of this story was just me?
I can’t tell you. Even if I were dead and cut
You could never tell me, but
the young sailor’s life goes something like this

A hot old pipe rested in the old  sailor’s mouth
As he overlooked the sea, that salt air
The wind in his blue eyes and his gray hair
He had seen many a storm in his time
But each one of them had a different rhyme
Like that of an old  sailor’s song