Archive
03/10/09
Shore Leave
Realizing he'd survived his voyage on the Unknown Ocean, Made safe port, after a dark, uncharted lifetime astray, He tied his mind's hawsers to bollards lining day's quay
And took long-needed, well-deserved shore leave, Along with his fellow shadow sailors from the skeleton crew Of the ghost ship returned home, from the opaque high seas.
But nothing appeared familiar to his salt-blinded gaze. After all, his father, Chronos, had stowed him away, in the hold, When he was just minutes old, before his eyes could see.
The streets, teeming with humanity offering itself up, decadently, To all manner of pleasures lascivious and illicit, beguiled him — Naked ladies writhing behind windows lit red as sin,
Men taunting cobras out of raffia baskets, with swaying pungis, Vendors puffing nargiles, offering opiates, aphrodisiacal smoke, To anyone craving escape to the realms of Psychedelia.
And he tasted of that smorgasbord of earthly delights, Marveling at the instantaneous deliriums his senses experienced. His arteries, veins, heart, nerves were alive with St. Elmo's fire.
How long shore leave lasted was impossible to ascertain, So surrendered was he to the euphoria of his ephemeral orgies. But when it ended, he found himself back aboard the Hourglass,
Its prow slicing a brisk rift through the misty chop. Looking back, through his saline-occluded, astigmatic vision, At the harbor town fast receding into his brief past,
He reflected on all that his invisible existence would be missing, As his ghost ship set a course toward the far reaches, Where he'd suckled on the Unknown Ocean's swelling breasts,
And he felt overwhelmed by a consuming peaceful ecstasy, Certain that land, with all its tantalizing Lorelei decadence, Was no place to navigate the afterlife.
03/10/09
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