A naked woman upon the figurehead
Standing proud in the breeze
Calling to the Sirens & wenches
Knowing the truth of these seas
Her beauty remaining firm & intact
The ship around her orange with rust
The sailors with splinters in their palms
For she has a wooden bust
There’s war out here in these streets
The physical city pulses & seethes
Tamped down by hate of denizens
Facts challenging all that we believe
All of society calling for our attention
While our infrastructure remains unstable
Tragedy & crisis revealed every morning
But I still need to put food on the table
Calico woman came calling to me
Hushed words within a poised stance
Lingering, but pale stars falling
Returned with dislocated underpants
Thinning with ulterior motives
Never forgot her hocus-pocus
An underlying pain feeding through
Life left when love slips from focus
Don’t look her in the eye
For it might tip your move
Just a simple guy
With nothing to prove
She wants nothing from you
& your humble ways
Society envies her
Stack that against the strays
Don’t show her any interest
& she’ll question her worth
Twisting this back on you
Like you’re the last man on earth
Keep to yourself
Don’t be any more than polite
She’ll come calling
With a need for you to quench her plight
The dispassionate sunshine emerges
Calling out my dulled & weary name
Feeling downtrodden so early in the morn
Slowly licked by the sun’s eternal flame
Stretching as I rise from my sheets
Needing reservoirs of coffee in times like this
Stark forms in prospective movement
Daylight meets love’s surefire kiss
Break free from all your interlocking rules
Unsatisfactory way to start your day
Too fatigued to suffer gladly these fools
Waiting for a sunrise in an errant way
I’d rather return to my bed, closing my eyes
No other way to explain how I’m so damn tired
Can’t get my life together after all these tries
My number always called, but I’m feeling expired
What will it take for me to finally see
Time to stumble forward for that pot of coffee

With her secrets daintily hushed
& her charms forever applied
My heart proudly sings out to her
This soul will not calmly run & hide
I want to shout my love forever
To be wildly demonstrative & loud
To cherish her until hell comes calling
Within the Lord’s love I am avowed
The illustrious words of Hunter (the elder)
We ante’d more than our parents’ share
Broken cups of mottled modeling clay
Abstinence leaving you lonely & bare
Chanting Yeats without a voice
A rye smile at the lively night’s end
Cocktail girls when only a wife will do
Looking to the heavens to make amends
Time is failing on a tractional level
Bleak mornings to come calling back
Needing to move without giving notice
Resurrection only possible with coffee this black
I hear the sea calling
I must traverse her once more
Collecting my wares
Looking for the key to her door
It’s never a pleasant voyage
For I know who I leave behind
But The Lord comforts me
& I have memories to remind
The voices come calling
Like shattered visitors in the night
Darkness expunged within thought
Auditioning words; trying to get it right
Vapid orations coming from the podium
Stacks of the wrong books & loose leaf notes
The dumbing down makes a tedious existence
But ideas are the traditional spark of an antidote
These notebooks drip with inspiration
Thoughts of passion in so many words
Raw relations developed from a focused mind
You want more, but you used to call me a nerd
Back in school, you were the height of popularity
I still remember how your indifference stung
Time does wonders in both directions
Beauty fades even while this life has truly just begun
“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”
― Oscar Wilde
Captain Q 