an excerpt from: Blue Haired Lady and the Sea

She touched him-
Spindly blue fingers creeping across his sleeve like an eight legged creature stalking prey. Frost and ice leaving foot prints in the wrinkles. The chill raising the flesh all over in small prickles of fear, like each cell could sense the danger. Though he knew she was there, there in the room, he couldn’t brush off the sleep that held him. How, she was so far away; she is so close. To close.

Struggling against the thickness of her web he got one arm free. It was that moment that he awoke- mainly from the pain. In his bunk, fear pressed all around like a stifling blanket, and scratchy, he darted his eyes from corner to corner. He knew she was there. Her blue hair would give her away, just webs of spiders long since deserted. In his mind, through fissures, she had laid her eggs. Hatching and creeping around in his head, little bits and pieces and fragments of what he had, what could have been.

What could have been, thank God

He hadn’t slept in nearly two months besides the dreams… cold dreams offering no comfort. Only the smoke gave him ten minutes of peace, but sometimes she was there too. There in the smoke watching him. Like this time now.

He had moved out of his quarters and back to the bow. Clutching his wool coat to his gray skin he scanned the still waters. Always dark, they seemed to ask for a kiss. Many great men had been seduced by those lips. Many great men… Dragging out the sweet tobacco he had lit in his pipe, he let it mingle with his senses and slowly out. Up and away it went, curling like the waves over a reef. He could see that evil siren, with hair the colour of turquoise islanders always had for trade. He could hear her song. In his bed he had felt her icy touch, it was still there on his shoulder. His hand had been there ever since offering comfort to the icy wound- a very insecure picture he mussed aloud.

“At least there was still some life inside this bag of flesh,” turning his back to the sea, and to his mistress. “I can still feel, and there’s still the sea.”

Half joking he thought to himself, “there’s plenty of fish in the sea.”

That was one thing he hated about himself. She had created death within him. Down to the very core was a void that filled now and again with cynicism. Like a cyclone it would cause havoc and floods and then disappear. It was a struggle like that, against Mother Nature herself, that he was no match for. He was just one man. Of course there was other things, drinking, smoking, isolation. But those where temporal and materialistic. She had torn his very soul. Her jagged blade hacking and tearing.

Noise had begun above. The night watch had retired and the crew was busy with morning chores. Not that he had planned on sleeping anyways. Knocking his pipe clear on the railing overlooking the last trails of her hair he headed to his quarters to change. They would no doubt be looking to see if he had awoke from this night or been claimed by his blue fish lady as they called her.

He never heard the end of it. Always. They didn’t ever question his tales- they could see what she did to him. His skin was pulled tight across his face. Dark sullen eyes peered out like little fish staring out a hole fearing the shark, always darting. He wore his cap high on his head keeping his long hair of his face. The curls were always seeking the shelter of his brow. Across his face lay an unsightly beard. Patchy and gnarled, looking like an overgrown tangle of weeds. He was not put together as he would like. It was known he didn’t sleep. Whispers could be heard over the rations of rum, he was one of the tales they told. Being already dead, naturally he didn’t fear much, except for her. His ship sailed the waters no other would. His polished boots had been where no others had. Even to Death’s door for a cup of tea and a biscuit. That gave a smile to his lined face. He liked the stories and even on occasion, when the rum was really good, told a few of his own. No one slept those nights.

To love and let go

To love and let go;
to forgive and forget
…and never know
To cry and cry
till tears slow
…watching love
…watching it go

To take another
to give your all
…till forever
To die to self
for this Lover
…watching love
…watching it grow

To be a part;
to be something larger
…there at the start
To have a healing
a mended heart
…watching love
…watching it grow

And to see the love,
the love you let go
…with help from above
You can never know
the feelings inside
…watching love
…watching love grow

Blue haired lady and the sea

In a room darkened by my mood, I am lounged sleeplessly in a faded dirty recliner. The vines crawling their way down the faded blue arm and underneath me and again over my head strangle me. My thoughts choke before they even fully bloom. Silence hums at my ear drums playing a simple beat to my memories of yesterday, and the day before… I cant seem to place that moment in any context, her hair so red remains blue. If I could only breath I think I could focus this viewfinder just a bit and recall her smell. Nothing. I want so badly to believe her love was real, but I cant remember what it was to feel. The touch remains lost somewhere… somewhere.

This time every night I set out on a singular mission, a man at sea. Inside I see a dark figure swathed in navy blue, a seaman’s beard scratching the wind. Facing strait-on, I look through my spyglass at the black sails of a blue-haired woman. Her ship rides the back of an angry kraken, colossal foaming waves and bottomless whirlpools litter her wake like trash thrown out for their uselessness. The smell is of death. A cry calls out from across the battle soaked deck, “Brace for impact!”

My mind wakes but my eyes don’t. They’ve lost their usefulness, like a heart that cant love. Pealing my lids back like you peel an orange, stinging and wet, my vision returns. But that seascape fails to escape. Salt still clings at the hairs in my beard. I cant sleep, I cant wake. I am marooned somewhere in-between the two worlds being strangled by vines overgrown and hungry.

The sound of thunder jars me from my little island. Rain running down my neck soaks all the way through. Shouts ring, port and starboard, as my feet loose the deck. The sand, spread to help sure the step through bloody battle, is now in my mouth as I pick my bones back up against the railing

-Grip cant be found through the slick and darkness-

Steadying myself as well as the lantern, I again scan the seas to the north by north west. Fire like ice, blue and blazing sneers back at me. Lips that seem so soft… you would just want to fall asleep in them while listening to tall drunken tales told by friends of deep seas… turned into a thin snarl.

-I cant seem to breath-

I don’t want to look upon that face of pure evil, I cant look away. So beautiful, so deadly. Again the thunder, the jarring, the lurch and creak and splintering. I am thrown against the railing so hard it breaks her gaze. But the ice is still there, there inside. The pain… stinging, stabbing air filling my lungs. Though not fully. Never fully.

Like the waves washing away across the deck, a dutiful scally scrubbing scrubbing away everything, my life seems to wash away into the sea. Parts being crushed under giant tsunami jaws whist others are dragged down into the bowels of hungry, dark and frothy, salivating whirlpools. Such effective weapons, hands don’t even need to be lifted, attention isn’t paid. I go broken and unnoticed about the sea. Her chilled wake beckons me like a chair in my living room-

-I awake drowning.