Yachting

Do you see what I see?
Upon our local tides,
Like the odour of seaweed,
A flotilla of elites,
A horde of second home owners,
Bleach-blonde and windswept,
Boat shoes and red chinos,
Onboard their carbon fibre trophies,
Spinnakers like noble house crests,

Do you see what I see?
For the summer they buy the waves,
A fashion show on the blue,
A lavish display for the plebeians,
A laugh in the face of living costs,
And when they deign to make port,
To mix with the chattel,
They just look down their noses,
Whilst sipping their IPAs.

Loose Ships

Are we not but sinking ships?
Slowly but surely,
Fathom by fathom,
Taking on caustic water yearly,
Our cerebral captains have run a loose ship,
Mutiny is the standard,
The posts aren’t manned,
And the hull is leaking,

The navigator is mollified at the helm,
Drunk on a rum of broken aspirations,
And there’s always a storm in the distance,
We drift past similar vessels,
Kindred spirits,
Unable to salvage one another,
And is that not what we are,
Just shipwrecks in the end.

Flying Dutchman

We were thrust into the blue,
Our galleon lost in a dalliance with the kings navy,
Its back broken by carronade,
All seemed lost,
The stormy seas sang our funeral rites,

But a vessel emerged from the deep,
Its jaws cut through the surface,
Like a shark seizing prey,
Accompanied by a chorus of the damned,
Flaunting a figurehead of death itself,

This was a corpse of a ship,
A grim omen given form,
A hull of rotted wood and barnacles,
And sails taken from the skin of humpbacks,
Dimly illuminated by wisps in lanterns,

We look up fixedly in abject terror,
Bleary yet distinctly inhuman figures stood on deck,
Gawping down with eyes of rot,
A raspy call goes out,
A ladder of bone and tendon reached down,

I knew in that moment,
I would serve before the mast,
Come hell or high water,
For all eternity,
But still I reach up.

Sirens

Men before the mast,
Harken to me as bosun,
We give those crags a wide berth,
We are in treacherous waters,
Have ye not heard the tales?
Here be monsters,
A foul song haunts these reefs,
Feminine wiles on the wind,
Soft hands I’ve heard before,

Look not starboard lads,
Listen not to that tune,
Those fair forms are lies of flesh,
Those lips do not long for you,
Your loins be telling you false,
No pleasure will be found o’er there,
Only a dance of blood and sharks teeth,
As surely as the fog cresting the waves,
That song will be the end of ye.

Abyssal

The waves are the embodiment of mystery,
An oblivion of crushing weight and shadow,
More unknown than the dark side of the moon,
Though its wane and wax has a rhythmic aria to it,
The abyss has a song all its own,
A dread tune,
Like tentacles licking at your eardrums,
Distorted static of whalesong,
The crunch of crabshell underfoot,
Its lyrics manifest as thalassophobia,
A warning in the mind,
Sharks teeth and squid beaks upon your nape,
Salt and brine on your tongue,
The knowledge that man is not welcome.

Dark Fathoms

The day finds its demise,
Tossing and turning,
My rest is interrupted by eldritch fingers,
Emanating a foul energy,
Tentacles in my mind,

I dream of fathoms deep,
To airless environs,
Where even fish dare not venture,
Waters claimed by spectres and arcane chants,
Where the sun and sanity both drown,

Something stirs,
Eyeing the surface with a million oculi,
A million definitions of mad hunger,
Watching a world it seeks to extinguish,
A million maws curling into grins.

Mutiny

Groups of people are ships,
Ironclad vessels built upon hulls of teamwork,
Did you know this?
Families and friendships and workforces,
They are crewmates on the same deck,
Sailing the same course,
To the same destination or goal,
Led by a captain of respect,
A person of veneration,
The rigging to the crews sails,

But humans are a fickle bunch,
Some souls have mutiny in their hearts,
They wish to hold the top spot,
So they drill holes in the hull,
Cut free the lifeboats,
And sabotage the rudder,
A rat-king prowling amongst the crew,
Pity this fool,
Who would sink the entire vessel,
Purely because they can’t be the captain.

The Sinking of the Dead Jester

Here I tell you a tale quite grim,
On this gelid autumn eve,
Of a vessel taken by the great blue,
A languid ship dubbed the Dead Jester,
Of no particular valour nor deed was this ship known,
Save for the incompetence of its circus of a crew,
Captained by a blind clown of advanced years,
A lookout unable to discern port from star,
And helmed by a mute convicted maniac,
The locker had only to wait for its prize,
The waves have all the time in the world after all,

This abomination of a crew,
They were destined for the abyss,
They had no care for this fate though,
There were nightly mutinies over scraps,
Every malm travelled was stricken with insane discontent,
Clowns wrestled with jugglers over imaginary lifeboats,
One man carved a hole in the hull looking for god,
The ship obliged yet in the wrong direction,
As the terminal aspect of the vessel descended,
No souls of worth were lost,
None shall be missed or mourned.