Crafting Cutty Sark into Flesh

Skyscrapers collect the sun’s lashes,  
Whips fleet-footed tourists to splinter  
Teak bow with iPhone eye and lost signals.  

Rats scuttle across (rig)or mortis  
Of Thames’ embankment,  
From her waters London was birthed.  
At your feet, watch the city move,  
Feel the breeze which pushes statues.  
 
***  
 
Anchored to rowed Cherry Blossom, the Clipper  
Dawn-washed in dewed petals, the crew shaved  
In their misty whisky-breath, ‘Wee’ Jimmy Wallace  
Imagined his head rolling into a bamboo basket.  
 
Slack away the tack, more than sails swung wildly:  
The Devil’s blade had wheeled its final destination,  
Poor old John Francis spooned his own guts  
To immaculately dressed sea birds.  
A wounded butterfly crossed his death stare;  
It may have remembered the sailor’s name  
If a fish eye hadn’t captured his return to flight.  
 
The figurehead Nannie dee  
Bewitched the ocean,  
Navigated a potion betwixt the legs  
Of the whore in the hammock’ed bed.  
 
A jasmine jaw drooled salutations to  
Stalled sails, jewelled compass stopped  
At the very point of some existence.  
Sidney Smith fled like snared whale song  
Freed from barbed wire fishing nets.  
 
Captain Wallace unshackled his  
French novels from library belts,  
Paced his cabin with idle poems  
~ snow, summer ice and soft caress ~  
To have drowned so far from home  
Would become his poetic prologue:  
The circumference of torn  
Ribbon around his heart.  
 
There was no one left to summon, but  
Sark’s Bell kept ringing until brass was chipped away;  
Cursed cabaletta with guttural shark gulp.  
 
Place a sea-shell to your ear, and hear  
The echo of damned souls, forsaken,  
Suicide-by-sea, by-sea, bye sea.  
 
***  
 
Nike trainers hold swaying young limbs,  
Bored by drone of tour guide & fake smiles  
Of modern housewives dressed as yester’year sailors.  
 
In lazy sunlight, he saw something move in the reeds,  
Something like a shadow monster in one of his horror books.  
Rib nudged his parents >  
Pointed to the ghoul scene.  
Their shut-up "HUSH" echoed across the City.  
 
The shadow watched,  
Then joined his crew.  

 
James Wallace was captain of Cutty Sark in the 1870s. His first mate Sidney Smith was a bully which led to resentment amongst the crew. Smith killed seaman John Francis and was confined to his cabin, but the captain helped him escape and threw the murder weapon into the sea. An angry crew went on strike and a lack of winds found the Clipper in becalmed Java Sea for three days. Before long, Captain Wallace realised his career was finished. He jumped overboard and his body was lost.