First
of five parts ...
The
funeral pirate
by Troy
Eggleston
This mingy lore
from angry sea
tells of fate,
a wicked seed,
and buried deep
within the weed
the funeral pirate
waits indeed. |
here
were two and one needed to go.
The left saw things with a vibrant flush, all things
dry excluded. It was the colorful one. It was the one that applied
a glossy brushstroke upon all that it filtered. The clowning optimist,
always dancing and philandering with the weak and weary, offering
repose to the lows that attached themselves like angry barnacles
upon our stubborn anchors. It was the right's exclusionary rival.
It was my concierge at times, pointing toward a
much-needed fire exit. "Get out! Now, you unconscious fool!"
But it was rare that I did not crave the burn. Making the majority
of the hours spent together nothing more than unbearable promenades
across the gut of my cynicism, a fraudulent opus.
The strings. All those ridiculous happy strings.
How deafening the joy! How dare I confiscate the inner struggle,
my suspicious loathing. And all for the sake of a sickening raised
flower or an embellished sky. Beauty resides in simplicity.
Simplicity rots in its own device. Such terminal
endearment, proposing all is well in all that is. The left was
a cryptic beast belying my instinctual prowess. We are built to
suffer, built to break down. That is why I wore a patch. A thick
black patch, dark as absence, solitary as refusal, shielding any
light that might creep in and whisper its lies with sweetened
breath.
My right bore likeness to this decision. With wry
crooked smile, the left was held captive, perpetually staring
into its own elementary acts of kindness. It was forced to seek
from within, while the right led with outward vindication. Its
grainy vision stifling the most picturesque of human endeavors,
weighing them down like a thick sulfurous metal. It observed and
concluded all within the same glance.
Its bitter indictments were hard-fought discoveries
derived through ripples of inexperience, wrought with impulsive
critique. The right preferred a struggle, yet it was far too impatient
to endure one. It felt that all true things are born from struggles,
and a hard-fought war is better than no war at all.
Occasionally I did have to call upon the gracious
insight of the left, though reluctantly and momentarily, before
rainbows and pleasantries began their ridiculous swirl.
In fits of horrific depression I would take it off,
the patch, for the better half of a day. My eye would be sticky
and red, immediately cowering like a guilty dog upon any shred
of light. But such as we are all born to do what it is we were
meant to do, the left would shower its fanciful glitter, its prolific
forgiveness upon all that it witnessed. The inspiration beguiled
me. People who knew me well, although still at quite a distance,
would often remark that I was much more pleasant without my dreaded
patch. Such an observation for a monkey.
"A childhood accident," I would scoff.
"A cruel guarding of fate."
"You look like a mean pirate," my nephew
would whine to his precious red-cheeked mother. He would hide
in the closet each Thanksgiving, frightened by the very thought
of having to sit at the same table as me.
How I loved gnawing on the dark meat of the turkey
bone, penetrating the marrow, while drooling a thick stew of gravy
and saliva upon my collar.
"Arrghh." I would say. "I'm just
a searchin' for me soul, matey. Have ya seen me cobwebbed spider-infested
soul, boy?"
He would cry and scream, asking his mommy what a
soul was and if his uncle's was rotting. Little fuckin' mamas
boy.
I did not have the courage to steal like a true
pirate, though. My thievery lay within assumption. I stood behind
the world, laughing at the backs of its bi-pedal condition, while
all my whims internalized and stretched at the cord that was thinning,
that eventually snaps in everyone.
Looking back, there were choices. If I denied myself
a righteous path, it is only because I am human. We are a species
enlightened by greed, evolving in a deranged circle. We open and
close our very own flesh just to grant ourselves a few more years
of bitter breath. It seems a confounded rehearsal. God must be
a skeptic by now, watching all of us toil in our own ruin.
"God," I ask, "but who is he not,
the soil confined?"
Staring out of my window I realize I was once young
... but, nonetheless, I also realize that I can recollect in mordant
verse for this eternal page.
But that is not my purpose. Not what I was meant
to do.
I am here to warn the world of its idle consumptions.
I urge all to take hold of that which is true. I no longer have
the option to see the light that resides in our creation. I can
only see the scars. The proliferation of my woes bend my spine.
Even when witness to the dearest smile of an infant,
it is purely mathematical. There was once balance in what is now
a horrific sideshow of guilt. I cannot say I have tried, for whatever
that may mean is left up to the opponents.
Now that I am old I have an excuse. I am a defeated
man. Yes, I had options. I could see the anxious light emanating
from anxious stars. But I focused on their toxic gases, swirling
in haste. I cannot rehabilitate the bad, and the good has perished.
I am writing now with a very distinct distaste on
my shriveled tongue. I have witnessed tragedy. I am remorseful
tragedy.
Beware young rebels, beware.