[an inscription carved by knife into a sign, in a rowdy pirates tavern, stinking of smoke and crackling with noise]
Know who you are at every age
And never stop growing older
Whilst throughout you move
at every turn
a little colder
[An old woman behind the bar begins to sing]
From distance to the moment
We sat around the hearth
That was three years ago
And in the past
There lies the dead
who turned to statues
who will not follow you
who will not sail.
[A young boy carrying bottles of rum to haggard pirates sings in a falsetto]
I worry; I oscillate
between pure presence
Anxious-becoming
and remorseful past-ness structure
this eternality's gaze and gait
it stops me from grasping an essence
Were I,
I might uncrumble and be silly again
[swinging from a rafter, a pirate draws his sword and sings]
From afar it seems I am
a partial object, liminal,
settling with my own dust
and always in explosion.
[a drunk pirate, our hero, walks up the hill away from the tavern]
Something has slowed down
To a colder pace
and yet so small it is:
It curses the moon.
how long it was kept in motion,
by that graceful hanging
I a gibbet!
how indulgently it basks in its
own silence
and calls the cavalry
to break upon itself
as an ocean wave
pleading with the tide
to stop its turning
so that peace may reign
But the world in motion
trusts no one who declares:
"I am the King of the Dreamers
and my vision is so robust
as to be propinquous to Truth"
[A peg-legged shadow now summoned blocks his way]
[singing over the sea]
So self doubt
rises and ebbs a tide
clearing beaches of
layers of memory
and dragging them down
into their black reaches
forms its own landscape
never mapped,
but sometimes cast in sand,
in an hourglass,
suddenly come across
and reflective not only
of the great sea's swing
its unfolding blue black wax
blossoming layers but
of horrifying treasures beneath.
So self doubt seeks.
[A navy captain inspects the water beneath his ship]
Come and sail here, please,
I drag my boney hand
through the wobbling wetness
along a headwind,
And claim to own the sea
as it ripples through my fingers
as I rifle my own pages
for a semblance of a storm.
And so what if i should let it go!
If I should pick my battles to not only save my pride
but to not even to try?
What is that, pride- A fool's hope?
Arrogance, as in a shield strapped
to a pugilistic lover?
A hero to be made in history by comparison?
And to turn on the King of the Dreamers
Some ship's captain stood
still rocking side to side but his words:
[the captain turns and shouts to the ship]
"Fly the colours, boys!"
They stick in the throatholes of the haulers
and roughen their hands to scars
and by this the morning's command
is cast foward through time
not ever to be mapped
but to be made Fate.
Fly the colours...
To what end?
[a single man up the ropes]
"In distant swansong heard
To some fair horizon
To the idea of a home
For a memory in moments
Redeyed and weeping
In rage and self pity
Or glinteyed and bloodshot bleeding.
To find the great storms
And pray to the topsail
Round the great bights
Where no man has been
But Love's become further
on lands left forgotten
Until a prison is build
from memory and rhyme.
I watch a seabird
A lonely last flight
and try to remember
to keep up the fight."
[two men looking over the port side on a moonlit sea]
"Beached, shipwrecked, washed ashore, shot, cannonballed, sunk. What difference? Its all the same."
"Think of home."
"Of home? This Home, now? Deja Vu. The same house. The same eyes, jokes, made up sayings. And all of this time, slipping past these waves with you. I can feel it, I am not here, I am not with them there, at home. I am just an idea, now."
"Stay for a while, then, keep my company, and lets take shelter. I feel the same way on this ship, this passing of time beneath our hull, theres nothing to be done about it but make knots. Surely it would be better to be amongst fellow company? Come, let us walk hand in hand. Knock kneed together. Just don't tell anyone else."
"Aye, I can do that. I suppose I should. I'm here with you, now. In my mind, she wants me to stay the same, I can feel it. I hold her in my heart, if i'll pass by those shores again, and pray she sees me new, not who she once knew. Not that sailor the night we spent at the riverbank, or in the deep dusk on the beach looking out, or walking up the road from that house, or suddenly catching eachother's eye on at the fairground, or in the hills and watching the sheep watch us."
"Your duty is not to her memory, lad. It is to the future we build here, and it is your duty to think of her as changed, and you can offer up what stories you make here and be repayed with intrigue. Going back in your mind is a comfort like no other, here, in the face of such nothingness. We sail on, relentlessly. Impatience can hit you hard as a bell's hammer, what use is it?"
"Hard graft, is what use it is."
"Aye, it is hard work. Oversharpen your blade, boy, you'll soon blunt it."
[door shuts behind them]
