A coriaceous book spine narrative
given jacktars, romance of masculine flounce,
marking skin with punishment proud tattoo
on roses of muscles, scrimshaw feast
for eyes
Drinking, flogging, religion and rocking courtship
of creaking boards and shifting stances, wind whipped
sunburned toughs blooming sails, tugging feel
on rope
In actuality
there was the ladening of burden
dispensed unequally on the cast of fraternity,
the clenched taking of it, muscle taxed,
mind gritted, hollowed out until what’s left
either’s hulked husk or honed bone
body polished to an ivory knife
pushing abacus’s possibility
of mutiny
~ Lady