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Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: PG-13 for imagery.
Pairing: None, really; gen work.
Feedback: Would be wonderful, however long or short.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Free-style long poem. Attempts to cover the whole breadth of PotC.
***
I. gallows bird
Bright-feathered, bright-eyed
A far cry from Odin's somber pair
No twin to the Morrigan's pet
The gaudiness is blinding to scum-coated eyes
We pass from hand to hand, and never a crumb to eat
So it says, silent
Sitting upon the clavicle of its last bread-man
The bone protrudes sharpish
Its ragged parched yellow tarp can no longer
Contain its inner
Smile, grim on black plain
Call it a halo, if we were angels.
We're devils, fancy and furious to the last
Our tongues may rot from our jawbones
But our feet still dance
Whirling whirling round round
Jangle reel, clatter until
The small white pieces dice themselves at the sea
A scrap of lace, well mildewed
A hint of ruby emerald jade
tucked into a rib, like cut-price stigmata
Perhaps a few scalp strands for the nest
If we were of a nesting kind
We're not: restless, the bird paces
Rakes at the smooth white ball
That once held the secret of life itself.
And it sets itself
Proud red breast to the bloody sun
Against the drift of timelessness
It calls, bold brash humanity
Married falsely
To cere hardness, jaunty false yellow
Below, beneath dangling rotting feet
The sea stirs.
***
II. seabed ghost
He was a bo'sun once
That was his rank
That was his title name life charge
That was him
But before the red wash
Stained steel and hands
Before the chains of Solomon
Dark dusky follower of the irresistible lash
Before that, he knew:
Veldt
Oceanic grass whispering around ankles
Color of sun strained through sky
The sound of meat ahoof, more than satisfying
The whole hunger of the world
Neverending fields
His scars were marks of another rank
Another honor
One he recalled only when matched
Sword-sword with equality
They ceased to hurt long before the curse
But it was not until then that he forgot
Outline of honest bravery on his skin
And the line of cruelty
Swirling down the map of man
Halving right and wrong
An unjust judgment, and you call this wisdom?
He feels them now, again
Turned to fish-flesh
Pitted seashells coiled around
Gold coins
Numbering two--enough for passage
The waves sweep him down
A wild storm
And as the sands pass over him
He sees gold-green endless once more.
***
III. the (girl-)pirate and the princess
Woman's time, we all feel the moon
But there's many as don't know
Night-sky silver beauty pulls, but it's
Dark cool ocean that flows
I've always loved the sea
Since when I still laid a-cradle
Father tells me
I used to reach for the seashell
Ignore the dolls
It's bloody-red and hot and sticky
And them men fools, they all think we're frail
Delicate, fainting-like
Well--
I've been hearing her longer'n almost all of them
Still, when we left England
So fast, too fast to fear and nerve
I had time to be sad
Never until then did I see the vastness of the gulf
My first kill, he toppled right off the pier
Blood spiraled 'round his sinking head
Went skull-down, and just went to show
I was right; he was stone-brained.
But I heard a sigh
She liked the taste. Blood.
She ain't delicate either.
Our voyage was easy. We missed most of the storms
Bored me to death, and so I sneaked
The dispatches, the older kinder sailors
Wanting to know of treasure and pirates
and life where the sky matched happiness
They never mentioned fog.
Or chills, mistook for excitement by a too-young petticoat.
You watch her, nights
When the moon's riding high
You hear?
She's got me body, like no man ever
And I've got her taste
I learned. I fell.
Salt in my mouth, lungs, and that
Was only the start.
Lessons I was looking for among men.
I should have started with her.
***
IV. boy in the forge
Fire he knows well
He's touched it, been touched by it
He'll bear its marks life-long
When he was smaller--
(not younger, he was older when his father failed to return, when his mother died)
When he was less strong--
(not weak, he wasn't when he arranged a pauper's funeral, worked his sea-tossed way across)
When he was slower--
(not stupider, he wasn't when he managed shop and accounts and respectably hard life)
--he let it ripple over him.
Red and black seared flesh
Not blue
But he burns himself now
Whips it to his mouth and tastes
Salt.
And he watches the flames
Wide narrow twisting turning striving upwards always
Liquid, he thinks, sting still on his tongue
He remembers drowning water-swallowed
In flame
And his scars echo through the waves
***
V. black-hearted apostle
Milton's blind
Still, he didn't see anything when he was alive
Better to reign where?
He never knew hell, though maybe a girl or two
Glimpsed him heaven.
You don't lead down below
fire say some ice say others they're all know-nothing layabouts
water's closest, gives when pushed but takes you where it will
Not ever. No one.
Doubt even Old Morning-Star…
And aye, I was as bright once
Pretty captain, but damned fine first mate
Who followed-
--kept following. That's the trick, see?
Hunger. Greed. Call whatever name you please, same devil as always
Popping up in that circle of gold.
That's hell.
***
VI. sphinx's joke
Three is a sacred number
Solemn
Go beyond religion, and still it holds true.
Truth is law, law is truth.
Immutable
Reason results in the right conclusion.
But Socrates never dealt with change
Never wandered far from his Athens
Bright light of civilization
He grew old, but he knew that in all those years
He knew that he knew nothing.
And unfortunately, that's not enough
Here, with the whole arc of life
Old man, grizzled practical humorous wise
Sparking less than he used to, but still able
To run and fight and flee-
Deserter
Who returns for the one left behind.
Middle-man, middle of everything
Fingers mix-meddling in the thick of it
Laughs more than any other
Death's trickster, treeing the timeless scythe time and again
Free. Pirate.
Youth, good strong promising
Throwing it to join the black side
Yet coming out the whiter for it
Or perhaps dark and light have smudged silver
Blade-sharp, undaunted and suddenly grown.
It aches
The mind, hidden beneath its proper wig of
Duty and Law and Order
It aches and it-
--stares at the passage of life,
Brilliant arc always just beyond reach
***
VII. microcosmic metaphor
thousand other quirks
staring back, reflections watching the watcher
world-full, people variable
pirates and parsons
freemen and slaves
women, men, and those that
are what they will
drifting on the river
***
VIII. reflections of a self-claimed captain
He wears the shadows of pain
Scar here, ruined flesh there
Wrinkles spread their toes from the corners of his eyes
No, time does not bear being cheated
Even immortal bones tire and dull
Death lies at his back and cups in his hands
One companion
He'll never be alone
Luck carries and drops him as it will
As it were, he's tempted it into more reversals than most
Memories
They fade, while the real sources come and go
Even black looks different in the mind than in the flesh-
--or wood, to be true to truth
And yet:
He can step in the sea
Day after day after day
And never be in the same one twice
Changeable the most, but there's always one
And there is always him.
***
IX. sails on the horizon
Brutality
Winds that will rip you down, crash your weak dreaming body
Down to the deep
Black water, greedy hungry mauling
It'll reach for you, full of
nays and nos and nevers
gainsay your every thought and suggestion
But for us. Do not mock our frailty
Or our uncommon fierceness
Do not ask about our ways
How we fight, what we must do
What we do, how we do, we do for you
We carry you home, carry you away, carry you forward
And we are all that lies between you and-
falling
***