John Nettles

Sailor's Lament

Sailors on one or another of the various
seas of fate, craft none too sturdy,
trick of circumstance that came
too late says this is not meant
by any means to be, once
when this world was still clotting,
we thought it appropriate
to assign blame, hand down indictments,
but that was just a line we purchased,
truth is it was clumsy us

We apologize for the random dole
of unthinking agonies, and for
the incredible bother, and for
the spectacular hailstorm that forced you
to wear helmets in summertime,
we went to the temple of the impertinents,
offered up our lives for solutions, but
the answers were so simple that they took
our time instead

When you become sailors such as we,
first thing is to leave your ghosts behind,
put then on the shore and watch them
rip apart your name, then suddenly,
amazingly, you discover little
difference between that thing codexed
"love" and that other thing, "fear" --
remarkable, really

Kept alive on a diet of hope tartare, and in
desperate need of a morsel of verity, left
alive, sort of, and forced to deal with unreal
expectations of our executive officer,
given that or the juice of his veins
on our chins, we're hard-pressed to decide --
run with the program
or spit on the Word?

Winds cutting randomly like some spastic
chainsaw juggler, seas get stormy, my love
came to me in the blue-green lightning
that prefigures the hurricane, a monolith rising
from the turbulence, placed a finger to her lips
and walked away -- let this be a lesson, junior,
never trust a siren who sees you
clinging to a mizzenmast and doesn't
offer you a drink

John Nettles lives in Athens, Georgia, for the time being. With his wife Shari, he co-edited the late, lamented litzine Stagger. His work may be seen in current or forthcoming issues of The Iconoclast, The Roughneck Review, John Cho's Editorial Haiku page, Maelstrom, The VOiCE, The Dead Mule, The Astrophysicist's Tango Partner Speaks, Conspire, and The Cafe Review.