Dead Calm in the Tropics

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
'Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!

All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand
No bigger than the Moon.

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

8:21

Damn the tears that stain my eyes,
Damn my vibrant jealousy,
Damn my bitter childish cries
And damn the spector which haunts me.
I walk the night and mourn the day;
My hours pass too quickly.
I wish too much to go away
And weep until I'm sickly.
It started many years ago
Upon a fresh September
I was young and flaming then
But now a dying ember.
"And so I sit here patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all these things twice"
Damn this dream I had now gone,
Disillusioned I've become.
How can I fathom myself among
Those whose brilliance stun
The listening ears, yet now
I know my bitterness is real.
For I damn their beautious song,
For their song, I cannot feel.
I was once a misty wind,
I would not, could not be shamed.
I was once a tempest wild
Sheer potential unrestrained.
And now, withered though I be
My tempest from within is dead
And left in dread and agony
I mourn the life to come ahead.
For how can it not be tasteless?

Answer me.

The Letters

With quill and silver knife
She carved a poison pen
Wrote to her lovers wife
"Your husband's seed has fed my flesh."

As if a leper's face
That tainted letter graced
The wife with choke-stone throat
Ran to the day with tear blind eyes

Impaled on nails of ice
And raked with emerald fire
The wife with soul like snow
With steady hand begins to write.

"I'm still, I need no life
To serve on boys and men
What's mine was yours is dead
I take my leave of mortal flesh."

Fripp/Sinfield

The Union from St. Johns

Ye landsmen and ye landsmen bold
Such little that you know
What us poor sailors do endure
When the stormy winds do blow.
The eighteenth day of November passed
A heavy gail came on
The heavens above looked angry on us
And the clouds o'ercast the sun.
The wind about east and beside me boys.
And heavy showers of hail
The night been dark and stormy me boys,
'Twas on a leeshore we detailed.
Our captain gave us orders
And orders we must obey
He said you'd had better get for'ard me boys
Your forsail to lower away
We tried to reef our main sail in
It really couldn't be done
It was under a free reefed for'sail me boys
Five leagues o'er the sea she run.
Once more she gently rises
Which caused all hands to say:
"God bless our noble vessel me boys
Once more she has the sea."

Bout three o'clock in the morning
We recieved a dreadful shock
We spied a craft on her beam-ends
A mile below Bellows Rock.
We boarded the wreck in the morning
A dismal sight to behold.
Three frozen seamen lashed at her pumps
Five more in her cabin lay cold.
And now they're gone, God bless them
My boys, your race is run
A widow must weep for her husband dear,
And a mother, her darling son.
She is the Union from St. Johns.
How well I knows her mold.
And every time I thinks un'er distress
It makes my blood run cold.
She is the Union from St. Johns.
Right well I knows her name
And every night as I lay on my bed,
I can hear the young widows complain.

Traditional Folk Song

The Continuing Saga of the Incredulous Bungling Dee (parts 1-3)

And the rifwag enthralled
For it had appalled
The incredulous bungling Dee.
Yet the taram begammed
When we had yammed
From two o clock until three
And painting with ink
Can make your heart sink
Into chaoticals tees.
And the whispering wind
Hath doth not sinned
For pureful the lush green trees.
And the rifwag turned blue
It cried, "I love you."
To the one so bungled increduly.
And the taram begammed
For a freight train just rammed
The incredulous bungling Dee.

The rifwag had called
When the bollwog had bolled
O'er the one who'd gone'n left me.
But the bollwog enthralled
When the rifwag appalled
The incredulous bungling Dee.
And I couldn't forget
The time I first met
The incredulous bungling Dee.
For the rifwag upheld
When the bollwog who yelled
At the one who had bungled to me.
And with that we cry
"An eye for an eye!"
To the incredulous bungling Dee
And so my ring rang
And drew a ying yang
For both my love and for me.
My toenails are red
As I sit on my bed
Next to a bungling Dee
Whose tale had begun
The day I was stung
By an incredible bumbling Bee.
It's name had been Zook
And he was a Kook
Stamped by a bungling Dee.
Who wasn't so bad
Even though I was mad
For he bungled incredulously.
And the rifwag held hold
With his heart of gold
My shoulder was for his knee.
My heart had spoken
For it was a token
Of the incredulous bungling Dee.

And I thought it legit,
As I popped a zit
On the incredulous bungling Dee,
Who was also an ape
When he had a crepe
Bought by the one who loved me
Who had a scone
When he sat on his throne
By the rifwag, my lover, and me.
The bollwog was clogged
And I had just snogged
The incredulous bungling Dee
And my own one
Who'd sat in the sun
Fried very frizzledly
And we came to know
The day it did snow
At the place where we'd wonder so free.
The sunshine had shone
When he finished his scone
And frowned at the rifwag and me
But he didn't know
That it had been so
With the incredulous bungling Dee.
And still did the chill
Cause and oil spill
Near the gulf of Crackaduckee
And then we did yell
At the man who would spell
Pepper without a capitol P
Ao I set him straight
And handled his fate
Without a catastophe
And the taram begammed
For a freight train just rammed
The incredulous bungling Dee
Then I felt so cold
And smelled nothing but mold
To keep the warmth inside me.
For twas then that I'd shiver,
And shake, and quake, quiver
For the incredulous bungling Dee.
And I specifically missed
The moment I kissed
The incredulous bungling Dee
So I flew a kite
In the middle of the night
Which just got stuck in a tree.
And I felt sad
And bluesy and bad
For the incredulous bungling Dee.
And I tried to remember
Back to November
Before he had bungled to me.
I turned round at random
And noticed the phantom
Of an incredulous Bungling Dee.
And he saw me cry
"Goeth oer I"
And I caught the freight train, you see.

-A much younger Krystn Raedly

The Pains of Sleep

Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees ;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
In humble trust mine eye-lids close,
With reverential resignation,
No wish conceived, no thought exprest,
Only a sense of supplication ;
A sense o'er all my soul imprest
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since in me, round me, every where
Eternal Strength and Wisdom are.
But yester-night I prayed aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd
Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me :
A lurid light, a trampling throng,
Sense of intolerable wrong,
And whom I scorned, those only strong !
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still !
Desire with loathing strangely mixed
On wild or hateful objects fixed.
Fantastic passions ! maddening brawl !
And shame and terror over all !
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which all confused I could not know
Whether I suffered, or I did :
For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe,
My own or others still the same
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.
So two nights passed : the night's dismay
Saddened and stunned the coming day.
Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me
Distemper's worst calamity.
The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child ;
And having thus by tears subdued
My anguish to a milder mood,
Such punishments, I said, were due
To natures deepliest stained with sin,--
For aye entempesting anew
The unfathomable hell within,
The horror of their deeds to view,
To know and loathe, yet wish and do !
Such griefs with such men well agree,
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me ?
To be beloved is all I need,
And whom I love, I love indeed.


Samuel Taylor Coleridge


Thank you again, friend.