Hold fast old junk, the goings good for a while.
As on the groaning deck the stamps and calls,
Won't mar the sun on sail and board.
Clenching hard to the deck, I fall asleep on my face
As, though sodden and sand bitten, I'm warm.
But sleep, even hard won, is never easy on a ship
As whispers from the blackest heart
Of the liquid beneath creep through my nose
And soak my brain in the salt of everything hidden below.
Cut on hard, old junk. The goings good for a while.
And though my eyes are closed mad dancers stir
In dreams that are wrought deep down and
hammered ungodly by the pressure of depth.
Once balmy oceans boil and froth,
Until they simmer the flesh, my countenance away
Til' just bare bones are left alone
and i'm left alone to pay.
In dreams of the rotten slave with stones in his shoes,
In dreams of the leviathan's grave, ragged with hagfish
In dreams of the nymph with her perfect **** and parted lips.
Who looks me dead in the eye.
Fish tailed, a filthy promise of a lie.
Theres the skeletons of the Indianapolis,
Atlantis as a garden of my bones that no one knows.
Jerking back awake, the stars have hit the sky.
The sea, now a black mirror, rolls slowly on,
As impenetrable as it ever was.
We see these things then let the sun
Burn them away and cut on.
And we remember what pressure does to the fish
That live in the deepest parts of the sea.
How they're disfigured.
But no matter how far submerged
the demented whips will crack again.
Unforgotten, insatiable,
so deep down in the dark.
Inspired by an underwater themed exhibition at the Tate in St Ives, still in a very rough form. Any feedback gratefully received, been trying to make this acceptable since November.