The USS Towers: A Sailor’s Lament

There she is,

Rusting under the fucking waves,
Our eternal mistress sleeps,
steel heart still.

We’re topside now,
but her ghost still raves,
In the depths where our memories chill.

Her engines’ dirty growl echoes in my head,
stale AC’s sour breath,
salt on my tongue.

Our small destroyer,
pitching, we bled,

Puking our guts out,

God, how we are wishing we were young again.

Mess decks,
a cesspool of stories and grease,

Hot, nasty coffee could raise the dead.

Shitty midrats barely kept the cold at bay,

Bitter sludge burning holes in our head.

Tossed us around like goddamn rag dolls,

Yet kept the enemy away,
our steel mother.

After long watches,
fucking dead on our feet,

She’d rock us to sleep like no other.

They sank her for practice, our old girl,

A fucking exercise,
that’s all she was worth.

Silent rage burns,
as memories unfurl,

Of our home, our hell,
now in the earth.

One by one,
we’ll ship out again,

Join that endless fucking Westpac cruise.

No more bullshit,
no more pain,

Just the freedom we finally get to choose.

She sails on through the starry night,

Her crew aboard,
forever free.

No brass to polish, no watches to fight,

Just us, our old gal,
and the endless sea.

M.Hatter

Tragic

The truth, so bitter,
Provokes nausea, churns
In your gut, a scenario
That could have been bypassed.

Vitality, entirely squandered,
Did you presume
I’d remain in the dark?

Those who place their trust,
Find their belief
Shattered by those
Unfit for faith.

Falsehoods and manipulations
Of reality have morphed
Into the contemporary
Sermons, cloaking the
Genuine truth.

Furious, you seek
The culprits, and
They smirk back
Right into your eyes.

They provoke you
To oppose.

Ah, they believe
They’re more cunning than you.

Concealing behind feigned
Outrage, they mask their
True sentiment: terror.

Their apparent indignation
Serves to measure you,
Merely diversions,

A scheme to shield you
From the stark truth that
They are the
Offenders.

The architects of
Agony and distress.

A man finds himself unable
To provide for his kin
Due to these inept figures
In authority.

They have not just
Expended resources and time,
They have ravaged
Your very spirit.

For them, it’s
The ebb and flow
That erases all
Traces in the
Grains.

Simple to be
Significant when you’re
The author of this
Tragic drama.

I refuse

To be sure, this is the craziest period of my life

sitting in this chair,

a helpless passenger.

A victim of the cruel, but with good intentions, 

or so they say, 

insanity.

So, 

I refuse,

To be intimidated, 

To be used, 

To be marginalized, 

To be over worked, 

To be ignored,

To be forced to compromise, 

To be disrespected,

To be forgotten,

To be patronized,

To be fooled,

To be beaten down,

To be raped,

To be told who to hate,

To be in a position of hate,

I refuse damnit!

I refuse to believe in them,

I refuse to let them bait me,

I refuse to let them categorize me,

I refuse to let them believe they are relevant to me,

I refuse to acknowledge the self entitled,

I refuse billionaires who believe they are benevolent!

I need to rise out of this chair of complacency,

turn off the computer,

switch off the phone, 

put my feet on the ground, 

and keep on trucking.

To leave this period of sin behind me.

I know, there is still good out there, somewhere.

A place just over the horizon,

in that warm yellow light at sunset. 

Isn’t that where happiness lives?

I need to find the way, need directions, I need a map.

But for now… 

I just fucking refuse. It is my right.

Isn’t it? 

  

What do you refuse?