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Fo'C's'Le - a Dream
fo'c·'sle /'fohksel/ noun deriv: forecastle
1. the forward part of a ship below the deck, traditionally used as the crew's living quarters.
2. historical: a raised deck at the front of a ship.
With the equinox illuminating a fortnight of recovery
On pelts spread like Ionian jars left askew,
My flame-keep sparked alight against the doldrums of
Greed. Stagnant and fetid.
My bark beats out a call stretched
Skin-tight over the sea’s virgin core
And sets trust aflame.
Ashes collected into the collated casks and
Corked with animus, Moon Girl pounded on.
Drumming a dirge on the tanner's own flesh.
Pounding the seed of echoing hope.
Pounding the corpus beat of life anew.
Those echoed my own harmony and emptied my ears.
My tunes would now be true and crisp.
My struggle to syncopate the middle eight
Was like on the saltchuck the time before.
Before we crossed the bar,
Breakers chasing, pounding aft of stern.
Now in the glow of the coal oil lamp
Sat The Dane who came to trade.
He mumbled a Chinookian curse and winced.
He sensed my mariner's cred, how I lit my smoke;
Muscle memory and addiction married in my subconscious.
But His eyes would never sense the venomous flow
Of the seabreak distant,
Like hounds baying to the highway of stars
And up to the dunes ran with phosphorescent faces
Fermenting the blackness.
Hell-hounds bounding.
Lungs pounding.
Driving on.
River may lick Disappointment’s shanks
But Drake’s gold remains unfound.
The cavities carved along the capes
Echo an emptied ethos and sapped spirit
Which salal and sage cannot clense.
Walk with me now Sister Ilchee.
Beat your dirge
Along the pock-marked ports of plunder
Laid before the flattened corpse of
Ebbing freedom found.
Copyright ©
Ken Rone
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