Dan Boehl & Jonathan Marshall
5 poems & 5 artworks
(please click on the pictures to see them at full-size)
**
Storm
The planks broadcast
my body. I am a radio. I am the false god
of adulthood. I am crippled.
There are 2 minds in the darkness;
one is the mind of reason
the other is the sea as a nightmare,
as we dream it. I smell frogs,
I feel pins in my body
popping like twin fires. A ship approaches
and shows me its skull.
I renounce the storm,
like a claw hammer
shattering the deck.
I fall into the hull. Splinters
rinse my eyes. I am a sound wave,
the heartbeat of the ship,
the cobweb that keeps it together,
the shipwright of shadows,
the dust collector,
the handsaw rusting. There is no level
in my mind, in other words
the world. I sleep in a keel
like a field furrowed.
The waves are ready.
**
Trade.jpg)
Slave (Memento Mori) Trade
I was called
and the captain
was behind his desk. He said
he wanted me to paint these people
he was carrying. He sent
for 2 chairs. One chair was
for an easel
and one was
for me to sit on. He told me to go
find a subject. I went out and
found the bearded man.
He was trying to disappear
behind that hair
from this nightmare. His eyes
were like caves, empty, and his smell
that of the sea. What I sought to capture,
his freedom.
When I finished him a few days later
the captain said,
“you did not sign it.”
I asked him what he means,
“my name or my number.”
He said,
“Your name.”
**
.jpg)
Conference(Regatta)
We don’t get free time very often
so on the day the harbormaster
brings out the lockbox
of accolades
we know it’ll be a week
of old wine, fresh pussy
and loose talk.
And then we don’t even hate
each other anymore. With dirt
under us, and money to spend
we pretend we aren’t competitors
but friends.
Where do you think this comes from?
I mean, the sea is how
we find our place in the world
but it’s also our place.
And we try to defend it.
For us to come
to a foreign city like this
is an act,
a will of the present
that keeps us from drowning.
Together we can listen to it
drifting through the window of a bar
and then it’s not so much our job
as music.
**
Poopdeck
A string
of electric lights sways
over the deck. Salt
swirls in the confetti.
Everyone has left
to fornicate below decks
and the ocean sighs its yawl
alone. The shipwright
is locked into an opiate dream
where oriental women
weave text messages in his hair.
He touches the bare planks.
He moans. He loves the ship.
He presses against her.
His tools sing
on the boards. He loves
the way her hull places
an anonymous kiss on the shore,
takes what she needs
pulls out
leaving the local girls
crying for more.
**
.jpg)
Life(style)
I found the dimpled gunner
his face pitted by the shrapnel of his trade
in the keelhold, holding up
some hardtack.
"Overspecialization,”
he said,
“is a bitch. The sea smells
always of the sea
and the pine planks like tar
and the deck like a gonorrheal piss,
a clusterfuck
of homosailors
and we see so much of the world
on the sea, but can bring
so few things with us. Sometimes
it would be nice
to have something new.”
That was right before he threw
the minstrel overboard
yelling, "I'm not going
to hate on the past,
but how come that fucker's
always got to sing
songs about Orpheus?"
**
return to Sawbuck 1.7
**
Dan Boehl & Jonathan Marshall are The Kings of the Fucking Sea.
(please click on the pictures to see them at full-size)
**
Storm
The planks broadcast
my body. I am a radio. I am the false god
of adulthood. I am crippled.
There are 2 minds in the darkness;
one is the mind of reason
the other is the sea as a nightmare,
as we dream it. I smell frogs,
I feel pins in my body
popping like twin fires. A ship approaches
and shows me its skull.
I renounce the storm,
like a claw hammer
shattering the deck.
I fall into the hull. Splinters
rinse my eyes. I am a sound wave,
the heartbeat of the ship,
the cobweb that keeps it together,
the shipwright of shadows,
the dust collector,
the handsaw rusting. There is no level
in my mind, in other words
the world. I sleep in a keel
like a field furrowed.
The waves are ready.
**
Trade.jpg)
Slave (Memento Mori) Trade
I was called
and the captain
was behind his desk. He said
he wanted me to paint these people
he was carrying. He sent
for 2 chairs. One chair was
for an easel
and one was
for me to sit on. He told me to go
find a subject. I went out and
found the bearded man.
He was trying to disappear
behind that hair
from this nightmare. His eyes
were like caves, empty, and his smell
that of the sea. What I sought to capture,
his freedom.
When I finished him a few days later
the captain said,
“you did not sign it.”
I asked him what he means,
“my name or my number.”
He said,
“Your name.”
**
.jpg)
Conference(Regatta)
We don’t get free time very often
so on the day the harbormaster
brings out the lockbox
of accolades
we know it’ll be a week
of old wine, fresh pussy
and loose talk.
And then we don’t even hate
each other anymore. With dirt
under us, and money to spend
we pretend we aren’t competitors
but friends.
Where do you think this comes from?
I mean, the sea is how
we find our place in the world
but it’s also our place.
And we try to defend it.
For us to come
to a foreign city like this
is an act,
a will of the present
that keeps us from drowning.
Together we can listen to it
drifting through the window of a bar
and then it’s not so much our job
as music.
**
Poopdeck
A string
of electric lights sways
over the deck. Salt
swirls in the confetti.
Everyone has left
to fornicate below decks
and the ocean sighs its yawl
alone. The shipwright
is locked into an opiate dream
where oriental women
weave text messages in his hair.
He touches the bare planks.
He moans. He loves the ship.
He presses against her.
His tools sing
on the boards. He loves
the way her hull places
an anonymous kiss on the shore,
takes what she needs
pulls out
leaving the local girls
crying for more.
**
.jpg)
Life(style)
I found the dimpled gunner
his face pitted by the shrapnel of his trade
in the keelhold, holding up
some hardtack.
"Overspecialization,”
he said,
“is a bitch. The sea smells
always of the sea
and the pine planks like tar
and the deck like a gonorrheal piss,
a clusterfuck
of homosailors
and we see so much of the world
on the sea, but can bring
so few things with us. Sometimes
it would be nice
to have something new.”
That was right before he threw
the minstrel overboard
yelling, "I'm not going
to hate on the past,
but how come that fucker's
always got to sing
songs about Orpheus?"
**
return to Sawbuck 1.7
**
Dan Boehl & Jonathan Marshall are The Kings of the Fucking Sea.
