>16356962
THE REGALIA
The Regalia was old, and an old, browned-out red,
Like Dijon moutard on which someone had bled;
Bound east from Coconava.
She was registered, maybe, in San Salvador
And she flew certain flags from before the Great War.
Who speaks of Ponte Vedra?
..or of where that bastardly boiler was from;
From hell is my geuss where it doubtless had come
in handy for tough cases.
And the crew? Well, the crew was a Dani-El's den,
of butt-fuckers, banshees and sad, tongueless men
who lived for conversation.
It was they who were first to report the disease
which spread to the rats and illegal Chinese
put on at Surabaya.
And at night came the jim-jams, at night came the cries;
of murder and merger and God damn their eyes
in half a hundred lingos.
And believe me, the blackman himself would turn pale,
If made to stand watch in a towering gale,
half mad with Java fever.
And by this point I didn't know chowder from chum
For ever since Oudh I'd been cutting the rum
with laudanum, and ether.
But I did see a merman off Porto Design,
an elderly fellow, he held up a sign,
It read: "They know you're coming."
In the straights of Malacca a monster appeared,
accepted our cook and said, "Don't be afeared.
The world's no worse than you are."
That may be, but it isn't a cure for the pox,
The ones with the balls and a brain in their box
Jumped ship in Yokohama.
While the rest of us, feeling a bisseleh stiffed
Took on certain stores, if you follow my drift –
And made for San Francisco.
Well, we got there God damn it, as I'm here to say,
Though porpoises pushed us a part of the way -
(That boiler was a bastard.)
In the hold was a fortune in copra and jute,
The captain's remains and a marvelous fruit,
Unknown in San Francisco.
>16357176
"If you want to regulate your life or judge history, you should at least know how God spends his day s. He has set aside a place, four cubits by four, and there he studies Talmud for the first three hours. From the fourth to the seventh hour, God sits and judges the world, but since he sees the world is guilty, he rises from the seat of Judgement and goes to sit on the throne of Mercy. During the third part of the day he sits there and feeds all the creatures of the world from the rhinoceros to the flea. During the fourth part of the day God plays with the leviathan."