The Monkey's Paw

Better you stay safe at home, on farm, in churchyard ode,
Better you do your venturing by daylight's company.
Better you keep to the roads you know, the songs you own,
no matter how bleak they may be, how dreary their sound.
Better you leave this page alone and with it the secrets
you'll take to your grave, for this be no ride on imagery.
The night you keep watch as this tale unfolds and dare
open the page on the secrets within, is the last
you may see of a decent night's sleep on a vessel forgotten
by all but the wind; naught but the widow's light burning dim.

Know she was once held in high regard, in registry and crew,
and distant ports of call would vie with kegs of ale, wine & whisky;
and girls upon the docks, in aspect gay and pleasing to the eye,
would wave their colors hopefully to glimpse a lover's locks.
Or, if by sea, they ran with fair and steady winds, then they
would think of things that come upon the ocean's swell;
a bird, a wife, a shanty tune or, when the need be great,
then that of which the ocean sings o'er the Maker's loom,
of moon and stars and wanderers upon their threaded strings.
Nay, put aside such thoughts. Too late! Too late! A luxury that's
gone for good, a rookery of hatchless plans abandoned to their fate.

Fair warning, then. Assemble now upon this phantom ship
that sails under flags that change from port to port,
from slip to slip, its crew swathed in black yarn shade
beneath a veiled fog for which such ghostly crews are made.
The silence in her hold as thick as blood. Her only cargo, grim
remembrance of the day the brood of flags hung still, breathless
as she pulled against a shudderless heave of the rotting death
across a watery waste, sighted once before by he who murdered
the albatross. Lost! Lost! as we carry out our heart's knell,
hand over hand, each breath a bolide in the birdless sky, wait...
till the bell-pull sounds on an empty deck and the bitter end slacks
against the kedge, as the darkness falls and the gale winds rise
and the great seas shudder at the dragon's edge.

'Twas the master's boy who stumbled into the 'Ship&Gate'
that night, pale as a ghost in a feverish state. "We sail!
We sail!" without trace of delight, only fright written there,
all over his face. Two days and two nights we'd watched
from the Inn as the captain walked on the empty decks.
Day by long day he would gaze two-points south,
night by grim night our glum moon'd captain would stride
like a bride tossed about a demon bed, gnashing the dark
till the stranger came and the two of them were closeted.

"What do they do there?" the mate asked the boy. But
not a word came from his fear-drenched lips as he clutched
at his throat and clung to the charm, an amulet meant
to keep him from harm; a lifeboat tossed in delirious seas
till they poured in some ale to speed the boy's recovery.
And again the mate asked, "What did you see? What did you see?"
"Th'they's charts everywhere with blood-seals upon them
and s'strange demon markings and th'things I don't know...
but, the stranger said, ere he left in the dark,
'Beware, my captain! Beware! You'll get but one throw.' "

Of her captain, yes, very little is said, and then only by night
among few. We should warn you tread lightly upon this ground,
for the fear that rises from the simplest question spreads a
trail of dread about town. Indeed, its uncertain from what is said,
as though dreamed, if the Master be live or be dead.

On the day we cast off he went straight below and so remained,
though some report, in squalls a lone figure about his size
working the bow chocks, hefting the line in an overhand swing
as though practicing, while sheet lightning flashed. But he's gone
in a moment as if never there, and some of the crew said through
'tween decks they heard, when the black gang shut down for repair,
a regular beat that the engines had hidden, a clank and a thud
in the corridor air that sent chills up their spines; that, and
strange markings the paint chipper found fore and aft, through
dark'd places of ship; six signs that that were written in blood.

What orders bound them is a mystery, not to be revealed.
We know the pilot held his watch under the two red eyes,
and yet concealed from the crew, even as heaven's shroud
fell dark upon a boiling sea gone mad, he'd said aloud
the course was true, but knew that fate had come for them,
every last fear-hardened man of them; each to his station,
each by his call, as the demon howling grew to such pitch
that some spiked their ears just to stop the screaming
and none would be spared while the wind's gauge ripped
into iron plate like shredded dunnage under cargo weight.

Still they stood fierce against that say, proud and determined,
as she rode the hawse and swept the decks they wouldn't sway,
burned their eyes in acid seas, put terror 'round their necks.
They wept blood and stood their watch, they wouldn't give.
She bent them to the wind, broke their limbs, still they stood.

Then a silence far worse than weeks of pulling a heavy
sun through the clotted sea, as the ship hung above the void
and earth herself was sewed. The Younkers men peered
at nothing there, nothing! Nothing! but blacken'd fear.
Then into that terrible trough they slid. Down! Down!
with nothing there, wearing the gown of death she sonds.
Then slows as if betwixed wind and tide; 'tis a calm that tears
at a sailor's guts, preferring the veering winds to this.
For what began a gentle lift now rose above the proper sea,
climb! Climb! until far below, the level fall could just be seen.
'Sixty fathom or more,' they said, and then upon the crest hove to
as unspeakable horrors came into view. 'Twas the roar of the furnace
of the world where water, sky and earth were burned.

Came the sight that could not be, that ripped the mind from mooring;
from beam to beam the burning caverns, from man to man insanity.
Ocean without flooring. An endless burning cataract of sky,
falling! Falling! Then rising from the disemboweled ship,
as from a grave, our captain stepped onto the foc'sle deck
before a disbelieving crew. He climbed aboard that charnel wall
with massive coil in his hand, leaned out over the abyss
and with a curse heard through spiked ears his practiced swing began.
Overhand it whirred. Around! Around!

That frightful orb gained speed and with it went his curses too,
till both had gained a fevered pitch, then he threw the weight
he'd practiced with, with all the strength he knew and watched
it arc into the fiery sky while deadly serpentry that lay nearby,
hidden in the boiling rain, coiled silently about his feet
and put him squarely meet within the bight of heaven's chain.

And so, as the arc began its homeward traverse, the heaving line
now payed into the night, he was yanked aloft as the chain let go
and hung by fate till the mate and I could climb the mast
to bring him down. But halfway through the final slash we saw,
in a flash of light, his shadow turned round and gripped his soul
and ripped it from its body's case. As we made the cut that would
set him free the anchor that held him fell into the sky and hung him
there, staring eye to eye, into a well of blasphemy over a fiery pit.

The storm held its breath in a moment's dismay as I looked
beam to beam at the world burning. Burning! till over the boil
I heard in the distance the beasts that guard that immensity.
A snarl of hounds through thunder-driven rain; a fiery curse
on the Great Maker's name that rattled the sky, cut the strings
in its lie and I watched horrified as poor wanderers fell,
one by one like helpless pearls, over a fry of deathly curl
into cataract at the end of the world. Then I heard the captain's
curse in the night, unfurled from where his form yet twists
and, he, in the bight of madness hung, for he'd moored us to hell
with a monkey's fist.

We could do naught for his screams , he was where he'd be kept,
as we lay where we fell in terror. Tho' nobody knows for how long,
we wept for the things we'd never see while the storm had its way
until one by one we opened our eyes relieved to have lived to see
hell's gate withdrawn. Still we stared at the sky and knew
something was wrong. Something had changed. We hadn't escaped.
For wherever we went, whatever the port, the stars had gone out
and the skies would remain eternally grey. Eternally grey! And now,
to a man, truth gnawed at the bone as each thought of his wife,
his drink or his tune, that we'd never get home unless it was done.

No more were the birds, no more the bright places, no more the
ladies so fair and so willing; nor the songs made for wooing, or
drinking or pleasing, nor fashions of day that stroll in fine gown.
Not for the crew in the black yarn shade who've lost their captain
two years and a day and ply the lanes for the way. The Way!
For they are but phantoms who come in black shrouds, who slip
through the fog and in through sleep's seams, by town or harbor
once filled with song, now a hapless crew that berths only at night.
In silence they steal into the mind, throw a kedge in a dream
and look for the scrap of chart or log that might lay a course through
the blasphemous fog; the way to a windlorn rot and beyond,
to the edge of a boiling sea; onto the horn of the devil's crown
in a quest for the meaning of six bloody signs and the course back
to hell and our captain cut down.

And now that the story of the voyage be known, you might ask,
how I come to be here? in this God-forsaken place as far,
Far! from the sea as one could get; as far as I could lose myself
from all I loved so dear, yet now by the very thought of it
am shaken to the core - no more, No more! will I set my eye
upon that place, no more. For I, too, sailed a year and a day
in that desperate search for redeeming grace, and with my mates
found no solace in our dreadful fog-bound state. Then came
that wound of western sun, neither bright nor flame as others
once saw, only a dirty brownish lump, a cankerous bloom
on a pallid skin of ashen gray. In that gloom there also
came that skeleton on its tackless glide through the deathly day.
Soon we knew we'd have to face that loveless demon bride.
Out of the grief-stricken sun she'd ride, she and her lifeless groom.

As panic rose among our weakened crew, the mate stepped
forward boldly and declared, "Wait! I say, there's none among
this luckless lot who has slain the sweet albatross. None this day
need fear the suffering, all told, that befell the one who has
redeemed us all, that Ancient Mariner. Be relieved, for this must
be the play of salvation's hand, come to free us from our curse.
The blessed day of a watery grave and an end to this blasphemy."
Oh were it, oh were that the end, what glory that would make.
But board and board the bark did take to see our hopes descend.

On the skeleton's deck she stood, just as he once said she'd be.
"Not so fast my little wanderers, we're not yet counting dead.
It's true a hand has stayed your plunge into the great abyss,
and burdened you with heaven's goal, a point you shouldn't miss.
I had naught to do with that, nor care about your captain's soul.
Mine is little side-bet with a most worthy player." Then she
smiled such a red-lipped smile it made our hearts grow cold,
and caressed her own leprotic skin with clear anticipation
that she full expects to win? "Oh why so glum my little ones,
so wan and without cheer? Have you not noticed? I'm alone.
My dour husband isn't here.". Words that could only sink
our hopes, and a sullen crew we were, until a very puzzling
thing began upon our lee. The shroud that covered all of us,
for all our year and day, evaporated o'er that side and opened
up a funnel wide where angels poured into that great breach,
tens of thousands singing; each arranged tier after tier,
as we succumbed to what all the legions of hell could not do.
We fell upon the deck, overwhelmed with joy and gratitude,
not dead, not that, but overcome.

Then did a strange and golden light fall as though air itself
were phosphored bright and grew until it had encompassed
all but she, who stood there somehow distant, not touched,
not even a single strand of that now famous golden hair.
And when the Host, Himself, arrived not one of us dare open
our awe-shut eyes, but only heard, "I roll! And it does not decide.
I roll again, but to your side. And yet a third, at last we'll know.
The game is done! I've won! I've won!"

Then the golden light withdrew. Withdrew! and left us
there once more enshrouded without clue to what transpired.
As suddenly as it appeared, the bark now turned and sailed
back into that lump of sun and then was gone for good. And we,
still down upon the deck, side-eyed each and each his brother,
checking if the one was dead while the one did check the other.
Soon we'd come to realize that death indeed was not to be.
No sooner did the good news rise, as if a dead man blinked
his eyes, it choked itself within our throats and bitterness replaced
its draught. As cruel an ale ever passed the lips of bitter irony.

Bewildered and despairing now, for why the roll and why the glee?
It made no sense to such as we, though we needn't wonder long.
Suddenly, some foul and slimy thing arose nine fathoms; more!
and wrapped itself about my form while the crew watched horrified
and the mate went white, "It's come for thee! It's come for thee!"
and watched as I was torn from my companions who had suffered so
along with me. And it dragged me down, Down! into the cruelest sea.
I'd a last look on those I loved as they leaned over starboard bow
and I heard the mate cry, "For the love of God, he's just a boy!
For God's sake, he's only seventeen! He's just a boy!" and then
that godforsaken shroud covered all and naught was seen.

Then a calm came over me and I thought surely I'll be free
from the madness that has taken us to places no one should
ever go. But that was not in store, for I lie upon a watery crypt
in a rotten mess of slime and weed where I could neither swim
nor sink and no one cared and no one wept. Seven nights and
days I thus was kept until I also cared no more. Then the swells
began to rise and the deathly grey sere thinned to hoary skies
when I heard the shallow breakers not far off that washed me
to an unknown shore just as you find me now, old and withered,
more wretched than that other Mariner though I'd not yet seen
my eighteenth year. For another year and a day I fought to put
as much dead sand as I could between me and that which
I once loved, a lover stripped of reason, a spectacle
of Cruelty's bitch.

Day by day the cold hand of the moon, rising up
through my thickened blood, filled me with thoughts
of tidal forces gathering to spill its poisoned flood upon the next
unsullied beach. Each day I waited for the thirst that could not
be ignored, to seize a victim listener and thereby propagate
the horror I'd endured. But no such compulsion ever rose in me
and so I began to think the Rime was through and, with relief,
that I was truly spared from the ancient Mariner's great grief.

Ah, would it be so. But then came the fevered dreams, the
blaspheming words and the faces of the crew beseeching,
Beseeching! till I would have liked to spike my ears had I
not been forced to write it down and put a stop to those
desperate men reaching for charts I could not supply,
searching for pilots to steer them by the fires of hell
that fall from the sky. It was given me, thus, to scribe
this tale as it is, that you've now taken it into your mind;
where as I speak it burrows deep though you'll not find it,
not awake nor asleep, while it spreads its silent beacon wide
for those in search of those who know and come to rummage
through such rooms for scraps and charts within your keep
or any signs created in your darkest thought, that you
may guide them to that place or, doomed forever, by God's grace
you will ride with them in the grey eternity; until our captain's
soul is caught.

And should they find the merest hope, some darker thought
that reaches there, there's naught to run, no place to hide,
no hallway of desire or dalliance or wish abide. For this
is no picnic on the dim dream of mind, there is no lantern
that lights the way. Your hidden thoughts and deeds repressed
need not be kept with a sailor's learning, nor acquainted
with astrolab or sextant or Waggoner's way; need only
probe dark turnings of that common labyrinth where all misstep,
from time to time, into the bight of life's tarnished chain. And
know that all the recompense you'll find, when truth be known,
is the certain forfeit of your dreams, remaining unclaimed
five years and a day in auction at the mast of sleep to a luckless
crew as they bid upon your precious tears. No matter. If forbidden
knowledge lay about, you will be taken aboard as crew
and stand your watch on the next voyage out. And ere you know
solid ground again you'll chance with the rest, be you farm or town,
that grim journey to the dragon's edge night and our soulless
captain be cut down; naught but the widow's light burning dim.

And lest you think I take no pity, if you admit the choice was
yours alone, I have little to offer against such forces. Still,
if you can find me, the boy with white hair, then perhaps
this amulet I wear round my neck, given me by an old Hindi,
may help if your journey should come to the draw. Its just a bit
of sailor's string and an old Hindi's shrivel of a monkey's paw.

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