April 13th - Whaling Ships

Nine Of Spades - Whaling Ships
18 - Beat Poem

32:2

After it has quited

One can hear the sails and

Flags winded

And hungry gulls

But not grief

As the butchers raise their gaffs

And the boatswain watches with empty eyes

And the able seamen continue their story

And the thirteen-year-old deckhand fingers his baleen necklace

As the butchers flense

And the visiting politician shivers under slack smile

And his visiting wife shakes in her corset

And the captain is not even looking

As the butchers flense

And the beast, breathless, quakes

And the grinning pupils of the chaplain laugh a prayer from Ezekiel

And a red wave washes over all the people

- their boots

As a butcher wipes his hands on the pages of a weekly newspaper

Somewhere back on America

A man reads the same newspaper

Pince-nez

Squinting in the fading sunlight

And moves to light his lamp

Check for a new poem here tomorrow...
In the meantime, check out April 13th's poem from last year.