Going Down With The Ship - poetry by shaun patrick green.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

The Ballad Of Clara Jane (a sea shanty by proxy).

Her mother gutted fish by day

Tossed off sailors by night

So when she was conceived

In the crook of her mother's elbow

Mistaken for a canker at first

Prodded and poked to make her burst

She was thought the devil's work

Then realised as the wages of sin

Her mother was told to see the crone

Who lived alone on Whaler's Blight

The crone rolled her walleye

And said: Let the child be!

Seeming some sins are worth preserving

She was born Clara Jane Emily Worthing

And her mother carried on as before

Fish and sailors piled at her door

Clara Jane quickly grew accustomed

To the sickly stench of the sailors catch

And the sicklier stench of their semen

Blood and entrails in the morning

Groans and wadding in the evening

She would stare from their hovel on shore

Toward that point where sea and sky meet

Thinking it the most perfect of all lines

As opposed to the curving human spine

And dream of one day sailing off its edge

Falling into darkest space like a stone

Utterly lost, utterly alone

Then her mother, poor soul, up and died

Leaving fish to gut and sailors to wank

And bills to be paid on the side

So she set to work at her mother's tasks

Pulling innards of one sort or another

Wondering at what the fish gave up

And what the sailors had yet to discover

In her 26th year the pox hit like a wave

Sweeping the sailors into early graves

Until the town was no more than a coven

Of pox-ridden angry husbandless women

Woe betide us they wailed as the tide woed

Where have all our dear men gone?

Clara Jane could see the writing on the wall

Because it was opposite her bedroom window:

Kill The Witch... it screamed

They came in the night with torches

She knew it would end this way and that

It was just...

It was just them needing...

It was just them needing her...

It was just them needing her to be...

It was just them needing her to be the mother...

The mother of their tears

So they dragged her into the street

Beat her senseless with chains and oars

Stripped her bare, pierced her flesh

Then threw her into the sewers

At the gates head, where the sewer breaches

Spewing filth onto the sandy beach

A plaque is attached to warn

"Here lies a cankerous elbow-bred witch

Who was doomed before she was born"

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

First Birthday.

One year ago today

You were pulled like a trout

From your mother's belly

Wild, wet and squirming

The indignity not lost on you

You continue to push at the folds

Of life's tight envelope

Looking for an opening

Through which to squeeze

All your myriad dreams

Bouncing in your bee dress

Made by mum mum's hands
After she tried dying

Ignoring the gifts

In favour of the wrapping

Us singing nursery rhymes

You dancing, clapping

Your struggle will be our reality TV

That is a parent's curse

To see our children's hopes

Sieved to dust and yearning

Until they become parents too

Unlearning all that learning

The Burden of Youth.

Youth rages in its cage

Gnawing at its potential

See them in their plumage

Morally tangential

Tempting the wrath of age

Most lithe and criminal

No limits to gauge

Death all but subliminal

Making us question the stage

Not just the actors trivial

Without them no change

A life quiet, convivial

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Return To The Coliseum.

Cruelty is back in fashion.

The Romans got tired of it,

Only after it had poisoned

Every corner of their empire.

Bread and Circuses they called it.

No need to worry about bread anymore.

Now the media empires reign supreme,

Torture is back on the menu.

Nothing like watching

Other people suffer
To divert us from hunger.

Does wonders for the ratings:

Makes the punters feel

Like they are not alone -

Not the only ones to cry,

Fail, break promises,

Be fat, drink too much,

Wear a bad bra, dreadlocks,

Paint daubed shorts, skimpy bikini.

Reality TV is where the new slaves

Are sacrificed to the lions

And social media marks

Their ignominious graves.

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

On The Acquisition Of Lamps.

In my dreams I always die

No matter anyhow

We all gotta go sometime

But it’s the manner of the going

That’s got me jaded

There’s a fat clown I’m talking to

And he seems understanding

Until he takes a straight razor

And slits my throat

Then there’s the one eyed hit man

Tracking me down through the city

Rain slick streets not slowing

His need to end me

Yet I don’t know what I did

To piss off his boss

Some gambling debt I guess

Though I don’t gamble

So have never lost

Then there are the robot babies

Like the dolls from Barbarella

Tiny but unstoppable

With gnashing teeth

Designed to strip flesh from bone

Home alone

I see them marching toward me

As relentless as an episode of The Block

And why the fuck not?

Let the renovators do me in –

Triple threatening me into a cold sweat

I hang on their advice

On how to quietly end my life

Which apparently requires

Fluffy pillows, shit art and

The acquisition of lamps