Dead Ahead

Cast off from the docks onto boundless seas

There's shops to be stocked, there are mouths to feed

Every town needs Neptune's bounties

But bringing them aground? Well, it's down to me

For the flounders, bream, crabs, cod and mackerel

Can't outcompete man, rod and tackle

And the salmon and the wrasse, barracuda and the bass

Are all grouped up with the groupers and a profit haggled

What's it worth to get your earnings from a sturgeon on a pole?

There's a lot of soul-searching when you're searching for a sole

No man is an island, but I'm fine to play the role

Living life on the horizon, it can really take atoll

What you want to risk to get a fishy

There upon a little dishy when the boat comes in?

It's a mystery, but I'm pretty sure a big'un up and hit me

Took a nibble and he broke something, ya!

I'll take tea with a spot of hake, please

Some chips, baked beans and a blob of HP

Love, craft and skill let you dominate seas

Tough graft won't kill, but a gob of green teeth might

Take you by surprise as you're scraping up the muck

No saying what you'll find, so it pays to have a look

Hauling trinkets all a-glimmer or just fishing up some dinner

Sure, I ain't much of a singer, but I'm great with catchy hooks

'Neath tides of bleak and briny

In that bed where fortunes sleep

Secrets lie beneath for finding

Weaving dread and silt for sheets

In the lambent lamps of phantoms

Flotsam all are we in time

Can you fathom what the fathoms'

Blackened chasms have to hide deep in the brine?

It takes the correct person to live off the brine

But I'm great at networking and me jobs online

Sure, maybe you'll get herding up the lobsters fine

But your fate is less certain with an ominous shrine

No, that can't be what I'm seeing, chance it's just something I've eaten

A mirage, or, perhaps, my bleeding looking glass just needs a cleaning

Heck, the hardiest of seamen can lose faculties of an evening

It's a fact of life at sea, but I'm still grappling with the feeling

That there's something coming after me, there's whispers in the tides

That crystallize in ocean foam of shifting, infinite eyes

Their ebbs and flows obsidian in twisted pitch of night

Or are the depths below, abyssal, mirrored in the skies?

Blow it, I'm a man of reason! Won't get caught in superstition

Bloke who can't keep track of real isn't a lot of use for fishing

But these catches that I've reeled are so rotten, putrid, writhen

Sallow shadows from the shallows, risen, withered and unbidden

From depths, immortal chest, enshrined abreast horizon's sprawl

Whose every crest, a breath I ride in endless rise and fall

A beating heart relentless, scribed, as tendrils strike the hull

And each a part, crescendant, chimes the yen of siren's call

Each swell imparts unspoken names as waves and senses break

As rudder carves an open vein left gaping in our wake

Though tokens raised from soaken graves may yet a fortune make

I fear for what the ocean claims in place of what we take

What's to find, harrowed craft

'Cross the lines shadows cast?

Hoist your nets, raise your pots

All is death, plague and rot

Hard to port, hard astern

Matters nought where you turn

Compass spins, stars have fled

We are all dead ahead

'Neath tides of bleak and briny

In that bed where fortunes sleep

Secrets lie beneath for finding

Weaving dread and silt for sheets

In the lambent lamps of phantoms

Flotsam all are we in time

Can you fathom what the fathoms'

Blackened chasms have to hide deep in your mind?

What's to find, harrowed craft ('neath tides of bleak and briny)

'Cross the lines shadows cast? (In that bed where fortunes sleep)

Hoist your nets, raise your pots (secrets lie beneath for finding)

All is death, plague and rot (weaving dread and silt for sheets)

Hard to port, hard astern (in the lambent lamps of phantoms)

Matters nought where you turn (flotsam all are we in time)

Compass spins, stars have fled (can you fathom what the fathoms')

We are all dead ahead (blackened chasms have to hide deep in your mind?)