Tuesday, June 7, 2022

Ahab's tale never gets old. Changes by way of perspective.

 

Ahab's white whale, courtesy of the NYTimes.










The Avoirdupois Chic

More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile. – Melville

My depraved indifference to death
sets Ahab to thumping his peg
against my leg so we’ll perchance into
that which precedes an heir bearing
his bi-syllabic surname on banners bright
through the belly of the whale warm as
mutton and potatoes tea towel-topped.
If you can’t bear a son, at least a splinter
Mr. Ahab says, for use against blubbery
blowhard though how, you might puzzle.
No intimate to his intricacies am I
who harbor soft-spots for heavyweights
fat as concubines, the avoirdupois chic.
Given the length of a life in nautical miles
there’s hardly time for history to congeal
for the slain to raise kin underskin the
abandoned to banshee dreams as locust
swoop hover and hum desert-side
Ahab Uno’s tent on palmy summer eves.
Ecstasy is all it’s cracked up to be,
insufficient, a means to a cul-de-sac.
Are locust merely in love with love?
Starting soon, let’s no longer be afraid.
The locust are at the door, dear. 
Well, set a plate for the happy couples! 
Tomorrow Ahab goes with his gut,
with its celiac flora.  Sing a seafaring
song of fish fingers, ladies, avast! ahoy!
Childhood fosters the eternal orphan.
God wants what God wants.
You, my dear Ahab, merely want,
though That Can Change, a sea battle
dispatch, a motto conceived of
circumstance and truth, life’s sequels,
now ebooks or available for download
at a workstation near me.  Near you.

by Sarah Sarai. first published in Berfrois in 2011.

Berfrois (https://www.berfrois.com) remains a remarkable amalgam of idea, narrative, poetry, perspective, philosophy, natural history, science, art, architecture, you-name-it-ism. 


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