Ghost Ship

The ghost ship haunts the sea

She'll come back and marry me

The rust is where her heart should be tonight

Her face is where her fingers were tonight

A glassy chequered engine room

The speechless silence of the tomb

The manuscripts inside the womb unfurl

A girl

Translucent as a jellyfish

That palpitates upon a dish

She stings you with her gently falling curl

And sinking in the waters green tonight

I wonder where my lover's been tonight

The ghost ship changes tack

And stands becalmed; her sails are slack

The cabinboy lies on his back and sighs

The mayonnaise is oozing down his thighs

The bubbles rising from the deep

Where deadmen sing themselves to sleep

From oak and coral they do seep to say

"Okay

You throw open my future like a chart

See through my skin; into my heart

That flutters in my ribcage like a bird."

And the ghost ship sails on into someone's life

The air from bottles forms into

The skeletons of all the crew

In white they dance against the blue and wail

Their curling bodies flail around the sail

The figurehead before the mast

Stares back into the golden past

Across the wrinkled sea so vast she mourns

Forlorn

She flutters round me like a moth

That beats against mosquito cloth

And tries to eat her way into my dreams

And sinking in the waters green tonight

I wonder where my love has been tonight

The melons on the riverbank

Are bulging through decaying planks

Their beauty is so warm and dank and light

The captain wears a headless grin tonight

And silhouetted on the blue

The cook, the mate, the captain, too

They know not where or why or what they do at all

They fall

Like masonry in the abyss

That opens every time we kiss

I hear their laughter echo round the bay

And the ghost ship sails on into someone's life