On the Edge of the World -- by File

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Twas a feral night that night it was
Storm forces, cyclonic
Cromarty came into town on a black horse snorting
A salted shadow steaming
Isolated dry eyes under flattened black hat
Like beacons in a bile sea
Looking past a raven's beak
Back at Forth from hell and
Slowly tracking Fastnet
On a wind cursed trail
Ere Ahab
Ere Ishmael
The maritime violence on his own coat tails
Had followed him
Here

The only lights in the vicious night were those of the Plymouth Taps
The door shuddered, burst
Shannon, Wight-boy Humber looked up
Beacons flit around the bar
Cracked black leather on a dead pine floor
Utsire, Utsire, Utsire, Utsire
Wind
Cromarty had pierced poor Shannon’s wet eyes
Cracked a sepia mouth and spat
“Thames.”
Her own ripe lips parted, dropped, she’d glanced at Wight-boy
And he’d stalled too
“Thames?” he’d made
Cromarty had lifted off the heavy hat slowly, frowned
“Fastnet Thames been in tonight, boy?” a sulpherous growl
“Aah..o..he’s off at Portland Fair, heh?”
Breathed the lad in the hollow air
And silence
“Gimme sac”
Tic, nervous action Shannon
Utsire, Utsire, Utsire
Cromarty had thrown his hat on the bench
And taken his flooding tarpaulin cape off
Hung it over a chair

Sparkling orbs of all colours and more
Singing machines and dancing men with striped trousers
And straw hats, rosy cheeked ladies and
Spun sugar, fruit punch and Harlequines Slippers;
Portland Fair
Lundy threw well at the shy with a muscular action
Not missed for a moment by Viking’s daughter Malin
Laughing, brightly in the growing showers
Incandescent prints in their curt book of hours
Fastnet and Tyne ran over drunk and happy
Tyne shouldered Lundy as he squared
Lundy slipped, they wrestled, Fastnet said
“Soo, Miss Malin my darlin’ shall we be departin’?”
And he’d offered an opportunist's arm
“Why thank you Master Fast but you’d be the last
Sole a nice girl’d be seen with after dark”
And she’d set her clear alabaster high,
And Lundy’d risen to be by her side,
Their fine boned noses had cut the sky
Led the way
To dry stabled horses

As they pulled up outside the Plymouth Taps the wind dropped
Leaves dropped
Gutters dripped and stopped
A thick silence seeped down through the still damp street
Tyne had said goodnight
'Twas not a good forecast
Lundy had swung in with the door
To the sullen bar
With Malin, laughing cut
By the dense air there
A shadow; Cromarty!
Lundy: “Fastnet run!”
A scuffle, a shout and a shudder
And Fastnet Thames is brought kicking inside
By two big old boys, long and tried
“Dogger, Forth, careful now
He’s to be brought back in one piece”
“So’s they cun stretch hus neck proper, harr!”
“Harrr!” says Dogger, fetid void, raw fish
Malin screams “Noo..” and is swept to the wall...
And Cromarty rises slowly
Going for his cloak
Wight-boy winks Lundy thinks fast
Wight-boy brings up a gun
Wight-boy slings it Lundy turns on
The slow old man in black
Dogger slumps a bit
Fastnet twists out and down to his boot for a knife
Forth fires first and floors him, faces Lundy facing him and knows
Instinctively
That all
Would
Be
Lost
If he
Paused
So he presses and
Fires
As does Lundy

All echoes and smoke in the small room
Malin fell to Lundy shaking
Trying to push him back together
Realizing
That she couldn’t
Forth gurgled and fell silent
And the slow old man reached into his pocket
For a stubby pencil, line through Thames, F.
Absorbed in the next
“Just doin’ me job lady” he said as he nodded
To Dogger to go now
Malin, caught in the undertow
Breaking all over the dead shore
Porcelain fingers on gunmetal

Cromarty, his hat on carefully
Left the ashes to fall
And back out in the storm
He’d heard the shotgun roar,
He’d set his lids a beat, that’s all and
Got back on his horse
Into a dark and feral night his sight
And Lundy, Malin, Forth and Fastnet
Followed Finisterre forever
By the lights of the Plymouth Taps
Off the edge of the world of maps.

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