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A Poetry Book Owen Whitehouse
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A Poetry Book
Bit late now
Owen Whitehouse
6
First published as a collection 2019
Published by Primedia eLaunch LLC
Copyright Owen Whitehouse 2019
CONTENTS
BARBARUS HIC EGO SUM, QUIA NON INTELLIGOR ILLIS (2015)
................................................................................................. 1
SENDING STUFF TO YOU (1997) ............................................... 2
A FUNNY SMELL (2017) ............................................................ 3
X – FILES (1990) ........................................................................ 5
FOR BIYA JIHAD FAYEZ (1984) .................................................. 7
GETTING BACK TO MILTON KEYNES (1999) ............................. 8
GLOBAL WARMING OR A LAST TANGO IN LONDON .............. 10
ALF’S BARGAINING CHIPS ...................................................... 10
STUPID AGAIN ........................................................................ 11
APART ..................................................................................... 11
LIPS ......................................................................................... 11
MINUTE'S UP (1985) .............................................................. 12
YOU ONLY HAVE 14 HOURS TO SAVE THE EARTH (2018) ...... 13
BEING ALONE RECENTLY (1989) ............................................. 15
PAINTING PICTURES (the wisdom of Mr Boddy-1985) .......... 16
THEN YOU SAID YOU WANTED TO CATCH SOME RAYS (1997)
............................................................................................... 17
OUT OF THE WOODS YET (2013) ........................................... 19
THEY (1999) ............................................................................ 21
8
CHICKEN LICKEN (1987) ......................................................... 22
THE 24 HOUR UKRAINIAN HOMESICK BLUES (1998) ............. 23
WEDNESDAY (1989) ............................................................... 25
SUN OVER HENDREFOELAN (1990) ........................................ 27
THE GARDENER (1994) ........................................................... 29
THE CRUEL FLOWER (1987) .................................................... 31
NOT READY FOR THE MUSEUM JUST YET (2019)................... 33
FROM CLEETHORPES (1990) .................................................. 36
BEACH PARTY (for Miss Scott, 2015)...................................... 38
CATHARSIS (1991) .................................................................. 40
NIGHT ON THE PRIMROSE PATH (1989) ................................ 43
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1
BARBARUS HIC EGO SUM, QUIA NON
INTELLIGOR ILLIS (2015)
I am angry when they debate history.
I hate it when they talk of peace.
I talk of glory when they mention meat.
I talk of sacrifice as they talk of truth.
I say remember them; they say never the horror again.
I talk of pride and they cry with the shame.
I raise my voice in a demand for respect, they say for whom.
I talk of defence, protection, they say of what.
I say they started it and they say when did ‘it’ begin.
I talk of duty; they ask where does it lie?
I venerate the majesty; they criticise the gluttony.
I lament the cost while they depict an industry.
I believe in the past and they look for change.
I accuse for country and for nation.
They say no, for people, earth and with patience.
Yet,
We should all remember these dead;
especially, at the rising of the sun,
because their names are ordinary labels,
signifying gone…
ADVENA SUM IN PATRIA
2
SENDING STUFF TO YOU (1997)
I’ll send you doves from my attic carrying love letters
prayers from urban priests
novels of kisses
telling how one kiss led to another
how they lived sloppily and happily ever after
even little crippled Tim, the poor kiss from down the lane.
I’ll send subways of newly tattooed wisdom
I will send the untouched
things that have been kicked around for a while
and a fragment of a day that I found on the doorstep.
All things being equal
flocks of words would wing their way over
oceans and seas, mountains and plains to reach you
they’d sing in trees outside your windows
and raise little sentences in nests high above
away from the threat of punctuation stalking below.
Perhaps sitting in the sun on a hot day
some notes will flutter down
and curiosity having finished off punctuation only recently
might pluck a note from the air
hold it in cupped hands
and keep it there.
3
A FUNNY SMELL (2017)
Love will be the thing that finishes you off
Not cancer, not pneumonia at 80
Not the absence of everyone you ever cared about
The absence of love
Or maybe boredom
The inability to even wank to amuse yourself
With your very brittle bones and weak tendons
Sitting
Uncontrolled of piss and tea, coffee and the like, in some stinking
home for the terminally unvisited
No staff really caring or not whether you give a fuck for football on
TV, for national anthems, for punk, or vag or veg
Any preference neglected and negated by life moving on before
death has commenced
For care, you will want, for the love of God, Allah or Dorian fucking
Grey
You will weep for the atheist moments you shared
For Jesus Christ and the glory, glory and glory of hallelujah
Yet, all you philosophical musings and mutations fall foul of some
Fybogel and a good shit
It was a while ago you stopped giving a shit
You will want warmth on your frail bones
The fat of another’s skin to sink into yours
You will want for tenderness that recognises the youth in you
Left wanting of love, to be held, a hold onto something
4
Nor for the want of a kettle boiling but the absence of any drop to
drink
Casketed, encased
By the empathy of the invisibles and love they cannot muster for your
angular and wrinkled features
And the worry about a funny smell.
5
X – FILES (1990)
How would it be if
I abandoned all of this
all sentient beings from other galaxies
spacecraft and all?
If I refused to spontaneously combust at the end of the evening?
If every wandering spirit just got bored
sat down with me for a cocoa
after a hard nights spooking
and talked of the current ghostly affairs?
If all the poltergeists pushed the milk and sugar my way
and reflected on the century's greatest hauntings,
discussed the terminal velocity of a creaking door through the mind
of the unexpecting?
How would it be if stigmata was God's own version of folding the
paper and making butterflies?
How would it be if the Bermuda Triangle really wanted to marry
Celeste
was really a nice bloke
grabbing ships from the sea, planes from the air
with the single-minded hope of finding her there?
What if Lee Harvey Oswald really did it?
What if the moon landings really did happen?
What if I shouldn't have turned down that street and gone?
6
What if David Icke really is the son of God and the snowman's
manners are not really abominable?
Does Loch Ness really have monster parties?
Should we be there?
What if I could remove all the ZZZZZzzZZZZZzzzzzz from the night
Would you lie with me and make soft X-files in the dark?
7
FOR BIYA JIHAD FAYEZ (1984)
on my head-screen
the dead stare of millions
flickers black and white
from behind the wire
despairing
at arms and elbows broken with rocks
by soldiers on hillsides
at this child dead in the street
this tear in the fabric of the race
this renting of life
for them, the sight is an everyday abomination
a brutal confirmation of the jackbooted hero
from the camps
at home now
lessons learned
faces set
the tribe that was gone is come
8
GETTING BACK TO MILTON KEYNES (1999)
In the cavernous minute since you disappeared behind the
departures screen
I have been cold in a hard bed
everything I touch becomes an abrasive under my fingertips
even the curves on the tyres look flat and square
no you
and I clump thud home, up the M1 like a clown in a circus car
clumsy clown down at the mouth
biting rectangular lips
the joke exhaust phutt-putting cubes of smoke in the icy air.
Someone has concreted over the fields
Artexed all the plants and
the motorway and pasture melt into one
There is man on the slip road by a Calor gas fire selling broken
branches.
Back home the big top is missing a few guy ropes
sags in the centre, lacks its usual Technicolor splendour
and from there on end, I hang without the aid of a net on the promise
of your return
Later when I nip down to the newly concreted fields
I'll be signlanguaging at the concrete cows
hoping for a little lowing
perhaps even a bovine love song
9
just a bit of beauty.
Some time later: the cows have a sense of irony around these parts
- three times a lady in B flat
Ho ho ho moo, yet still, no you.
10
GLOBAL WARMING OR A LAST TANGO IN
LONDON
The Japanese cherry trees in Hyde Park, are blooming early
handing down bouquets of pink blossom to all comers
standing out like a summery sore thumb up the arse end of
winter
glad for the sun, that hides, naughty between the petals
a decadent lover playing coy in tiny pink silken sheets
waiting for the last kiss
and then going at like a rabbit all the way to summer
ah! for the unforeseen randiness of global warming
the sun on my trousers and spring in my step.
ALF’S BARGAINING CHIPS
She came in just after closing time
one forlorn Friday night
the girl from his fat stained dreams.
Soft voice, warm eyes
she was so beautiful.
Alf, shit out of chips
in the greasy casino of life.
11
STUPID AGAIN
Occasionally,
when I feel like a heel,
I desire to be struck,
like a glockenspiel.
The music of my mind.
APART
Such distance
we're just words away
we echo in the immensity of their absence
silently body languaging at each other
across the abyss.
LIPS
If we didn't have lips
we wouldn't be able to
kiss in winter
without getting chapped teeth.
12
MINUTE'S UP (1985)
When the myth of humanity runs dry,
through sheer disappointment
the world will implode
and nobody
but nobody
will be any the wiser,
except maybe the sun
who'll nip off home and tell his wife he loves her and
about the strange thing that happened at work today.
13
YOU ONLY HAVE 14 HOURS TO SAVE THE EARTH
(2018)
It’s like
You hold on to the memory of Buster Crabbe for all you are worth
With all your increasing might
You settle into the sounds
Without really hearing them
Where the space ship chugged to the ground
And how long it sat, sits there alone and silent
On that far too distant planet
With Prince Baron, Hans Zarkoff and Ming
Only slightly less merciless
Only slightly less relentless than today
The swash and the buckle
Zoro and horses like arrows from bows
Like mighty cannonballs, they seemed to fly
I think about them everywhere I go
But the time will come when everyone will know
They were just a bit shit
And how long and alone we sit feeding on that glee
Snuggled backwards into a life less known by now
Black and white
When Cheeta wasn’t much more than a glint in Jonny Weissmuller’s
eye
And you weren’t born my son
And then you were
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You were born into a world of colour, a map less red
And though you have added colour of your very own
It’s sometimes hard to see through my black and white window
It’s a bit late now, it seems it’s your world to save
Your heroes will cape the world in hopes
There will be no chimps
But those you choose to hairy on around you
Plus you have words of your own; I know them
But Tarzan does not, more fool him
Though the villains are more nuanced
And you have a superpower or two tucked away somewhere
Like, anyway, you know a guy
(Less than 14 minutes left)
But it’s still a party out there because
You have all these different tunes to dance to…
I know you Scooby Dooby Do.
15
BEING ALONE RECENTLY (1989)
I search for your smell
nuzzling like a small animal
into all the corners of our togetherness
tossing the quilts hither and thither
looking frantically for you
but you're frantically not here
you're being frantic somewhere else
and I’m cold on my own
quilts just aren't enough
simply because they were ours.
Sleeping in my hair shirt
was never part of the grand plan.
I need the warmth of your blood
huddled in its soft skin
huddled around me
huddled in you.
I hear you breathe in the night
and need you and your curves
kind full ready to hold me.
In the mornings
I miss our damp skin
after we've slept tangled
under the remaining quilt.
16
PAINTING PICTURES (the wisdom of Mr Boddy-
1985)
In the multicoloured mess of men
it's a disappointment to see
how many are prepared to
paint pictures
from a stock of evidence
to the contrary
and to leave the issue black and white
which aren't colours anyway
I seem to remember being told
by someone at primary school.
17
THEN YOU SAID YOU WANTED TO CATCH SOME
RAYS (1997)
then you said you wanted to catch some rays
and picking up the empty bottle of wine
you moved into the shade
much later I thought how easy it would have been
to snap off a few strands of sunlight and offer them
insteadafraidperhaps of the improbabilityofthesituation
I put them in my pocket
undressing for bed that night
in the characteristically frantic way that I do
I scattered fragments of day everywhere
and they lit the room with summers
I gathered them in the palm of my hand
and in one piece of light
I caught a glimpse of the sun resting in beautiful brown eyes
over dude shades
I saw your hair fall across your face and you smiled
I distinctly saw you smile
but they were just fragments of a day
not a whole, not an hour or a minute
18
strange how easy it would have been to offer you those strands of
light
more strange that I kept them for myself, glad that I am
I try to be as clumsy as possible these days
In the hope that I’ll scatter the fragments again
and see you smile.
19
OUT OF THE WOODS YET (2013)
Broken out of the sheen of the skin of these wrinkles and ripples that
fold into the land,
A wind’s pulse beats out memory full and skin warm, numb and
drumming.
Chaff from the breath, wheat from the waves,
Sharp, whetted against the curve of memories of lovers’ banks and
edges.
Welling and slipping, shades as simple seams, a haven of all this light.
The sea peers out through drying wind broken branches,
Through a creaking lullaby that simplifies a look back to the town and
different age.
Around the corner, the bow brakes
And at this curvature in the earth where the light bends to the eye
before a beholder can blink,
A pale rainbow disappears over the horizon and straight on until
morning.
A wish that was, if ever a wish there was …
Wishing on a tide bent to buggery on breaking out from all this
meander;
To explain meter marking the distance to dawn
And yet for each and for every one, there will be no waterline to
speak of, no measure.
20
In the shallows, a familiar winter tide returns and wonders at this
place, where the earth and tide play out their parts.
Perhaps here, this place, where happy wellies dance and splash and
little cycles trundle through a cascade of light sprinkled across the
twinkling ripples.
Perhaps here, a town from a distant age rises.
Perhaps now, from here, all the lapping tides will come and the trees
will part for the woods.
Weaving the sheen of the skin of these wrinkles that fold into the
land, weaving them into something new…
where tides and time mingle with the world
unfolding.
21
THEY (1999)
they who would valiant be
hallowed by their name
worship in the dark and whisper
to the masters of heaven
counting out the sins
under a well-coffered roof
they murder all that is holy
in the knave with the candlestick
they bludgeon the words of wisdom to a dusty pulp
and while a light of heaven on earth goes out
they sing of all that is bright and beautiful.
22
CHICKEN LICKEN (1987)
As they run down the street crying:
'THE SKY IS FALLING DOWN'
there is terror in their sockets where their eyes once were
myopic sun thoughts blinded by the day
stream in their demon lung
burning air from life and stumbling limb
to leave this fractured world
the story goes, is gone
on
though this time it is not the acorn
there are no trees
no seed
only the collapsing breath
of embryonic black.
The sad truth is
that the sky really is falling down
and there isn't a big enough acorn
anywhere
to knock some sense into the poor dumb creatures
jumping merrily into the flames
the irrationality of their leap
the final perfection
a reality realised
as their fiery fiction consumes them.
23
THE 24 HOUR UKRAINIAN HOMESICK BLUES
(1998)
In the morning
I made a rasher of bacon into your mouth
gave you fried egg eyes
you had a button mushroom nose
baked bean hair, down to your knife and fork thighs
I make a meal of your absence from the time I rise
each coffee, each glass of water that brings moisture to my lips
I find your kiss there
at lunchtime
the alphabetti spaghetti
played cross wits with my unconscious
and in each vanishing vowel
and in every lost consonant
‘YOUR SOFT WARM BREASTS’
disappeared from view.
I like a little nibble
but it's really not the same without you
at night
I dressed pillows in your pyjamas and whispered sweet nothings
but the pillows were deaf, maybe just rude
linen as a lover has nothing on you
24
I tried to talk to the silver silence of the night
but the moonshine
the silver silence
reflects only on the damp surface of you
so, I wove strands of moonlight into pictures of you
but Mr Moon, now feeling rather dim
pulled up a cloud and locked himself in
then, I strained to hear your voice echo from far far away
but the darkness was quiet and had nothing to say
no matter what I tried
the huffle and buffle of life while you’re away
there is nothing in 24 hours, and
nothing will do,
nothing but you.
25
WEDNESDAY (1989)
Since we made love last week
my life has drained away
and pointless isn't the word
this time when you gave your love tears to me
and your early morning warmth
I knew you were mine
and was sad.
Holding nothing back
you died into the softest of creatures
not love lost
or even love gained
just your life exhaled
to condense later in your mind’s eye
so much youth
wasted on me.
In either of my roads for you
I am lost
I am not you
not us
am not me alone
these former things have come to pass
no longer am I hopeful
out to save the world
tainted to death
my will is
26
Batman out shadow
Spiderman’s unwoven web
the wishful boy wonder
watching you sadly
as I leave
to go to some other place
somewhere else.
27
SUN OVER HENDREFOELAN (1990)
Sinead sings while the curtains blow.
The Chinese boy from next door
lights two cigarettes at once
and the bottles in the window of the timid house watch
as the daisies are white.
Others struggle to laugh in the shock of the water fight.
A bit of Dandelion floats in through the window past me
and I think it’s a moth and dodge it
while the girl from next door inadvertently picks a daisy
with a handful of grass she’s clawed.
She throws it aside.
She’s wearing bright clothes and brown legs
and a recline that needs comfort not in a flower but in the skin of
another.
I wonder what to have for tea
and if Graham is going to burst in
with his happy go lucky scouser head on
and laugh me out of boredom.
I go downstairs and have a cheese sandwich
and watch TV until the football beckons to me from the sun
and I laugh because I’m crap at it.
Graham says he’s Ronnie Whelan
28
but the phone rings and I don’t have time to believe him.
Later we all stagger blindly from the pub and I fall asleep with a half-
full can,
the bedside light on
and wake with the TV hissing.
29
THE GARDENER (1994)
The stranger sat an inadequate object
decorating the carpet
shoes covered in too many years
of chasing that which he'd known all along
a head full of nothing but calculations
of where to throw up next.
This is the man who convinced himself
where his love lied, fell into nobility
and came out the other side
with a few more brave scars
to be borne out on the next obsession.
In the puke and the shit now he wonders
how he ever came by this life
did he bump into it one day
when his sense was on holiday?
accept as it said oops I’m sorry
would you like to live me
it will be such fun?
no
The holiday is over
and only the carpet resembles a garden now
the swirls are the flowers
the regurgitated ideals and egotistical thoughtfulnesses
are the earth upon which he rests
30
only this land can fulfil its promise
only this land never beckons him grow
only this feature in his life
recognizes no earthly virtue and kin
he lives the Zen of wasteful oblivion.
Later he will bathe and be gone
no touches no kisses will he recall
only the tender of his garden
will buy his attention
sold he leaves towards autumn
and the twisting of flowers.
31
THE CRUEL FLOWER (1987)
The schoolyard of shrieking children
laughing kindly contemptuous
arms and legs winding around mouths
around the words
and pointing fingers and fists
self-imposed preamble to the purity of eternity
a clarity of insanity
a half said hell not quite understood
only half heard
a mess of whispering threads
teardrops winding slowly around them
wax from the shadow of a church candle
marks out the mould that makes the masks
slender drips and drops slop through the flicker
threads woven to a tortured grimace of face
and disfigured disjointed
interwoven screaming of limbs
that crack and break with a hollow sigh
ahumansoupofboilingtwistedfeatures
soup around and around in the pot
a beautiful personal pandemonium
the little cherubs
the flies
around the rotting carcass of man
decomposing in the playground
decaying from the start
32
branded at the out
shallow minds
deep scorched hearts.
33
NOT READY FOR THE MUSEUM JUST YET (2019)
As I look back now, at those androids dreaming of electric sheep
I know much of it was not true
Their worries were complex and closer to my own
The click and the whir of their worries amounted to such as:
Will quantum computing toasters come over here and take
my job?
Will I respect them in my kitchen space?
Will the toaster feel the same?
How do I tell the toaster of my longing?
I knew even then, the fact that one day, even my quantum toaster
would be sitting in a glass case, for perusal, by the side of an
explanatory screen
A screen on which it will be difficult to see through the beam of some
holy sun stream
And the sticky fingerprints of pointing children on a museum trip
How the supposed perfect lives of androids and toasters came
undone.
I knew way back then but said nothing
I knew they missed out on love
On the ordinariness of a together walk
I could see it
Every time, the android delicately and apologetically struggled to get
the toaster setting right
34
Discretely complementing the toaster on its golden brown lightly
buttered offering
Android longing for the simple pleasure of burnt toast
But caring too much to say
Burnt toast
As philosophically and emotionally important as any art movement
Neatly hanging in white space, by a picture of an ageing Tracey
Emmen who could only dream of being such toast
Elsewhere, alone in a single case
A small phial contains the last tears of the last quantum toaster
It sits like a potion waiting for a spell
For someone to speak some ancient magic
To unlock a canister of empathy gas amongst all these empty
changing worlds
And fill the chamber with care.
Then it happened one day
Amongst the warm green smog of love
No one said a word
As the androids broke in and made off with the Kettle, the iron and
the trouser press
And of course the toaster
Staff just watched and ushered the bandits this way and that
A crime of passion the judge said
Who himself had always struggled to get the settings right and make
off with the goods.
I never saw the android and my toaster again from that day on
35
And to this day, they live off the grid somewhere
Making soft beeps together under a solar canopy
And arguing politely over the bread-making machine.
36
FROM CLEETHORPES (1990)
As a child, I saw Cleethorpes
and all the wonderful panoramas it had to offer
that fun could never kill.
Frightened of daddy long legs on the roof
picking cockles
sand dunes hiding little plastic lumps for me
I think they were plastic
may have been natural
might make you glow in the dark
fun for us all
the big wheel
where Michele and I knew
the ripply bits on the sand
that were hard beneath the bridge of your foot
and made good pictures in my friend's arty photo's
years later.
There were shantytowns made of old people
and their designs
gone now into the earth and ocean
but not forgotten
wondering if their old bones would form
beautiful corals full of the wonder of harmony
and possibilities always boundless
in the young years
reined back like the ponies
who drown with their riders on the Cleethorpes flats
37
like abandoned swings and trampolines
and go-karts in Yarmouth
that I’ll never ride again
the crocs and bats in the castle thingy
me being ill in the caravan
catching pneumonia after eating too many pancake eggs
Lusty Glaze
Uncle Peter and me
too many Toffee Crisps
and not being able to surf
even a little bit
climbing up the Brigg end like Hillary, but terrified.
These days, I concoct my holidays
away from that little caravan that
I built in my mind of my mum, gran and me
in that happiness.
All that has come to me since is different
and now I holiday
in a world they can never share with me
where the beaches always echo
by the side of the marble sea.
38
BEACH PARTY (for Miss Scott, 2015)
I have been doused in the joy of your teaching
And the glee of the firelight of learning that twinkles in your eye
My final year is full
Full to the fat brim
My heart well beyond gorged with life and love to do
You gave me such sweet sparks to set flame
A chocolatey marshmallow of learning
Sticky rich with ideas and bounce
Melting slip by slopping drop
Running down the little coloured candles
Marking through my time
This time indeed
Happy in the hearts and minds of mates
With friends
Long from here
My thoughts will dance a light fantastic
Around this blaze
As the beach party crackles
Hooting and a hollering as the ocean rolls to my shore
Later than now, I will sit and story through the warm breeze and the
embers
With like minds, where you set the beat
My foot falls amongst these flickers
Where the fire started
And the party really began to swing
Somewhere out there in the distance
39
Far and away by then
I will still be dancing to a rhythm of you.
40
CATHARSIS (1991)
There is me and there is the room
and between these dear friends there is something
that needs to be enhanced.
There is a picture of Debbie and me
kissing in a French photo booth;
black and white, very Casablanca
quite romantic really.
It appears to be okay though,
quite cold actually,
not needing at all.
Then there's the picture of this Polish guy,
in a queue at a horse fair.
His face is all squashed up by the throng.
It makes me smile,
and that’s good enough.
The big map of the world
that Willy bought for me,
makes me feel small;
brings to mind our conversations
about supernovas.
Feeling small is good.
I'm not very tall anyway,
41
and the room isn't very big.
Books, a shit load of books,
mostly half-read,
and college work,
half done.
The less said about that the better.
half-smoked fag
boxer shorts drying on the radiator
unmaid bed
a poem from Donna
about a robin and
she can't wait for me to come home
at Christmas
February now
just beginning
she can't wait for me to come home at Easter
tape recorder hissing behind me
(maybe I’ll put some Don Henley on)
frog ashtray
Kazuo Ishiguro
chess set
orange juice
empty vodka bottle
gas lamp
darts in the back of the door
and the clock ticking
42
me or the room are
all these things
perhaps I’m missing something
something between me and this room
me stepping out into an air
filling with a crescendo of violins
a conductor thrashing wildly
baton and blazing eyes
prom of proms
storm of silence
higher higher higher
desire need fire
burn baby burn
wild I think
let’s get wild
maybe
I don't know though
second thoughts
let’s not, not yet
it's snowing outside
maybe today's not such a good day to die
I’ll just sit here and watch my boxer shorts dry
I mean, you've got to do something as time goes by.
43
NIGHT ON THE PRIMROSE PATH (1989)
I alone am I
or at least should have been
it seems that was my pretension
but as I swing from the chandelier of my excesses
strange that I find myself lonely
talking to people that reside in this "ness."
I preoccupy myself with caterwauling
and various off the wall quips
and the desire to plunder
numerous maidens in distress.
Listening to the despondent chatter of my gathering
momentarily shelving that stumbling orgasm youth
I am left singularly wanting
for that which is not within my escape.
And still
I find myself old in my head eye of her
befuddled by the years
lost in security
mourning that puerile charlatan adventure.
A thought across the bows.
44
No doubt I will lose my greatest treasure
guarded only by the ghost of my sanity
while similar pirates about her
try to master their own destinies.
Confused I hide in a myth
afraid perhaps of my own irrelevancy.
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