the truth between the lines

The truth between the lines

  In1955. I went to sea I had to take the bus
as the ship was moored or hidden rather in a small bay
Mother had she known would  have stopped me for me
 me to go on board. Along it railing a group of scowling men
passing the time by spitting into the water.
In the galley, I met the cook who knew the rudimentary
of cooking he was cleaning dirt from under his
fingernails using a fish knife. A giant of a man few dared
to cross him,  a friend for life.
With a crew of murderous ruffians and a million cockroaches
 I had to live, yet we wore bandana of grey and they
had as I the pallid skin of poverty no soap can wash away,
in a way I felt a kinship with them and I was accepted.
When the ship docked in Genoa I noticed some of
the lads smelling of perfume, the cook told me they were
 going  to meet elderly men, who gave them dinner,
a little money and shiny objects, it took me a bit before
I too understood. Not to forget the evil twins who went to
Public loo to beat up gays, the cook would not let them come
Near the galley, they boasted of having put a gay man`s head
Down a toilet full of shit and they didn’t let go before the man
stopped resisting. But homosexuality raised its ugly head
a bum was patted someone told the captain and the homo
was arrested and thrown into an empty cabin, in the morning
he was not there  and the captain who was judge and jury
decided the man had committed suicide. This was a winter’
in the black sea with much ice. A naked man had been
 found on top of an ice floe and he had red marks on his neck.
I think the captain did it a religious nut and an intense
hater of homosexuality like an alcoholic, but there was nothing
I could do. The rest of the crew were men who stayed on a ship
for a few months paid off in Antwerp and spent time drinking
till money ran out and had to go back to sea again. It was time for
me also to leave I needed some schooling to avoid being like them,
a lost tribe drowning in the vast ocean of ignorance.