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Wednesday 16 April 2008

Knocking on the Hull -- by File

-

Father here I am,
            the woken. Stolen
By nocturnal tides, the taken from
The undertow of your troubled soul,
Your drinking, drowning
Me, I had to go

Father here I am,
            the frozen child
The freezing man forsaken. Lost
Sailor incarcerated, son nailed on
A sunken cross; the Kursk and
Memories of you
And home

Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be this abysmal nave
On earth as inertia and insistence in oceans
Don’t leave us with our sins as we left those who sinned against us
Which led us into conscription and delivered us not from war games
Give us this day viaticum
For their state is their kingdom,
And their power is their glory,
For ever and ever

Father here I am,
            echolocation, the spoken,
The waves, vibrations,
These verses. The hull between us
Is iconostasis; leaking,
Rusty,
Broken.

-

31 comments:

guitougoal said...

I hear you my son, i hear you. Are you ever going to grow up into a child? it took me a lifetime to become a child.

file said...

Pere G!! my father, my boy, my nightcap and my breakfast, o that I may have my lifetime lead to childhood too 'do you remember the backstreets of Vienne, two children begging in rags...'

this piece follows quite naturally on from the Sentences thread but it was written weeks ago, might accompany Robert Plant's Ship of Fools I thought...

Zephirine said...

Bloody good, isn't it? Clever File.

file said...

high praise from the high poetess, thanks Zeph, inspired I am by your support

DoctorShoot said...

this is a very scarey poem file straight from davey jones locker of wicked tales...

very scarey...

my nightmares manifest...

file said...

I remember hearing the story of the Kursk on the news and feeling an immediate connection to those trapped down there, scared the shit out of me too

Anonymous said...

Stupendous. Moving. I sat in a cafe in Kennington with an Israeli friend when the news about the Kursk was in the papers and at the same time there were suicide bombers in Israel.

Neither of us knew what to think, but we found it hard not to cry.

So many years on, I find it hard not to cry reading this.

file said...

thanks Mims, the survivors of the initial explosion were trapped in compartment no.9 and had to knock on the hull to aid the rescue attempt as their sonar had been destroyed...

Anonymous said...

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guitougoal said...

alugel,
you need to ask lord Ebren permission to post your brasilian product here. We may arrange a meeting
for you but there is a 6 months waiting period, the man is very busy.Meanwhile, Samba and mojitos all night long in the taperoom .

Zephirine said...

Ahem, actually you have to ask me, we are a breakaway state and Lord Ebren has no power here...:)

Zephirine said...

... though of course he is always welcome to drop by...

guitougoal said...

is Zeph the highest ranked authority in the "Other Stuff" chaine of command?
Olle! when do we get a raise?

offsideintahiti said...

Oh, look! An albatross!

Zephirine said...

What, this kind of albatross?

offsideintahiti said...

Precisely, Zeph.

Not that I'd want to compare our Filou to Baudelaire (or Coleridge) just yet, but I do suspect he has a problem with his wings.

file said...

hmm, feel more like this kind of albatross

'comique et laid' might sum it up! But it won't quiet them squawking muses...

offsideintahiti said...

Dude, that's a crocoduck. You really should know your fowls if you're gonna be soaring in elevated company.

I didn't want to pay you too high a compliment (worried that you might grow a bit of a melon) but what you offer is consistently good, so I'll stick with the albatross.

Un de ces jours, je t'agacerai le bec avec un brûle-gueule, that's a promise.

file said...

!! ... or a Duckodile! Either way it's an ungainly sum of unholy bits

violent abuse is so much easier to deal with than compliments eh? If you could only see me blushing, as I've said many times here your enjoyment is my reward (though that strangely fails to impress my bank manager, heathen!).

Myself, I'll gladly settle for a shared pipe with ya Offie ;}

offsideintahiti said...

Violent abuse? Cool... just give me a moment to think of something.

And speaking of pipes, it's about that time of the evening. Back in a flash (and a cloud of smoke).

Zephirine said...

That crocoduck is great!!! It should be the mascot of OtherStuff, don't you think?

offsideintahiti said...

But I thought File was the mascot? I'm confused.

Zephirine said...

File's Chief Contributor and Albatross, he can't be the mascot as well...

offsideintahiti said...

Feeding the albatross is going to cost a small fortune in fish...

Zephirine said...

Well, you're the one with the canoe and the sea just down the road...

offsideintahiti said...

Yeah, but you know the beast, soon he'll be asking for saumon fumé on toast, and sturgeon eggs, and little delicacies like that cos, you know, he's like, a poet, like.

file said...

...with dill please and lashings of Montrachet

offsideintahiti said...

See?

Anyone for Albatross Casserole?

file said...

...with dill please and lashings of Montrachet!

If I don't eat me surely no-one will, the albatross ouroboros might be another contender for OS mascot non?

guitougoal said...

foie gras tiede du perigord avec chateau yquem, omelettes aux truffes accompagnée de pape clement.it was so good....aaahhh le bas trop serré!

offsideintahiti said...

Château Yquem, hein? Show-off.

Oh, alright, I'm jealous.