Black Flag

 

 

It is time.

raise the colors

hoist the sheet

undulating in the balmy heat

some black reticulating nightmare

flickering in moonlight —

the night watch at the helm

in darkness, a caricature

as a kind of truth made up of lies

a fabrication of this and other realities.

Where fantasy is all I know

As a vortex that closes around some unspecified point

Where fractions of the whole still won’t add up

as if shaping memory into an ideal

becoming a beautiful lie.

In a Profiteering off of experience

No. I don’t care—

I’m done talking with their Capitan

Mate.

Blow that ship apart.

Burn that bridge.

Kill all but their carpenters.

We are the maelstrom

Of petrels at sea

Harping down on one tender note

ribshots until they can’t stand.

take their face.

Their water
their wealth.
their blood.
& their shame.  

it's ours.

My days have devolved into rendering flesh

Where steel against bone,

and steel against steel

coin against counter

plastic against magnet

I sail.

Harder.

Harder than before.

With the brutality of impatience

A grinding millstone

To all of the human forms

That I leave behind

Sheathing my piece

To a wake of chaos.

Familiar, like a voyage I have made before.

Where I wish to abstract myself

From memories past

By relegating them to some kind of dream.

a delusion that has become plunder

opportunistic to the last  

Like a rising sun over and endless ocean

wind to the sails

move us forward through time.

Beyond the carnage

of success and failure

we sail.