Before the Creeping Dawn

It is night in the town
Where the softly split, apple picked orchard eyes
Of the hungry thieves
Cast clasped hand gazes
Rolling down the crooked cobbled alleys
Where the devil darkness blazes

Sailors in turncoat tunics roar with sleep
Dingle deep in rum-soaked dreams
Through treasured seas, swashbuckled skies, skivvy beaches,
And battle gun blasting beds
Tearing flags to tie around their oak carved,
Mast hoisting heads

The slow-tapping, crow-flapping glow
Of the chamber-dwelling, moon-talking star keeper
Angel white though on this night
Tinted through the soulless haze of winter
Dwelling deeper, only deeper
As if dead suns were buried
Amongst the harvest of the bent-hipped reaper

The seabed weary whales
Fill the air's lungs with haunted screams
The oceans grave, dug by moonless tides
Free from the wave-lapping labour
Of the surface of it's sides
Richer by the vessels that it hides

The slum of the drunk
His wet whistle on the banks of his skull
Full weathered and waned, caution carved
On the stone of his blood
His gutter home the ghost of his pride
He lies on the footsteps of the night
With songs that flood to the corners of forbidden light

Spray of the love-soaked sea upon sea
Rolls within the dreams of their tides
The pier and it's wives straining in the heavy, fish-bone night
Alone against the ocean's fight
As the townsfolk traipse and mingle in their silent gilded hearts
One by one arising to the breath of the salty sun
Splitting both horizons of the sea and sky apart