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   I, A SAILOR from a work in progress  
   
   by BERTIE MARSHALL  
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I, A SAILOR


Under the shadow of abandonment, the ship's sinking, the seas can't breathe. This world's in mourning. We're all on the same sea. The furthest extreme is an oasis where Camels dream. I, a sailor, a sailor of deserts and dreams and sex. Big black cock steaming in the midday heat. EAT IT or sit on it get fucked by it call it brother, imagine getting fucked by it, fucked to port and starboard.

Watch the sky crack open puffing out white clouds watch buttocks crack open streaming blood poke about in your bloody turds to find God's filthy foetus on your breath.


SEPIA SKIES


The sky's brown. Ever seen a brown sky raining piss?
The slush of decaying food. We sailors. Your home. Your temple of merde. Your kingdom cum. Rotting meat lay at your feet. Proud excremental walls.
I need those ocean voyages badly ...8 months at sea dreaming off the coast of France.

Mermen get through the net and come to my cabin ...what oceanic delights do they bring? Jeweled dildos and seaweed jissom nectar. I can see an Oyster boy all pearly white dripping unknown substances and shyly disappearing into his shell again. Did I ever suck or swallow his pearl?

My ship mates talk of humping cunt and rotting syphilitic whores but boys are my treasure. On board, treachery and betrayal lurk under every sea sodden plank. Microscopic crustaceans thriving under the finger nails of dead sailors.

Bound body soaked in sea salt and sweat..." Give that fucker twenty lashes with the cat o' nine tails" barks the Captain.

Oyster boys laughing overboard salty tears of laughter. "We're heading for the horn!" they gurgle.


I, a sailor, miss the boat


Hands frozen, the sea curls around bloated bodies - this wreck called my sex life . . .we're in a storm, a storm of desires. Barrels of rum running loose drowning rats - ratty stew. Wooden splinters in manly hearts.

The lantern becomes the only light. What do I seek above the waves? A thousand ships will sail for this, mutiny of moments.

Everything must be cast overboard so that nothing is left of the ship only the damp shitty smell of cum long gone or piss long dried... the smell of my arsecunt with its woody aroma... gulls replace ravens and the occasional albatross screams... all stevedores and matelots each and every one of them that ever lived over 100,0000 have been inside me, the walls of my arsecunt are tattooed by them. Scar tissue that reads sexual Braille by each cock head that follows therein.

Bed in the cabin strewn with little shards of glass.
Dead waves dying seas. I can't throw away the stars.
Well I woke up this morning and for a couple of seconds I couldn't
remember who the fuck I was.


AH HA TREASURE


The mermen are similar to mermaids except they're either emerald green or gold depending on the time of year they're hatched... they have sparkling violet eyes and fabulous muscled bodies with long goatee beards made from sea weed and pubic hair. They're well endowed with huge dolphin shaped cocks that ejaculate silver sperm... they fuck one another by lifting up their muscular tails revealing a mollasc type arsecunt which opens and closes and puckers and pouts, greedily sucking in other dolphin phalluses... they shape shift whilst under water, usually during fucking, they shift to shark boy or mantaray man, they're wild and for centuries have been the fuck buddies of pirates and I, a sailor. I eat my last prawn cracker and dream of one of them visiting my cabin.


THE LITANY OF THE WAVES


Begin burn peril - fish long dead - the gods depart.
I'm on fire - white flames from a white tiger.

Graveyards of rusty trawlers... no treasure, well a kind of a treasure - if you can call the colourful glow of mustard gas and burning blue of phosphorous - a treasure of poison miasmas. There is nowhere left... ummm well only certain places along dark alleyways where the desperate nibble fish skeletons and drink the jissom of sleeping dogs.

A dying oyster boy bright purple from mercury poisoning, his shell smouldering, his pearl a burnt speck of black dust ...choking somewhere.


IMAGINED JOURNEY


In a small cabin on the ship I sit waiting for the stars to wink at me ... windy it's very windy my face freezes like a kite in a wind pocket. We dip into the waves. I'm trying to find what exactly? Ten beautiful inches behind wool. I, a sailor name Keanu Reeves the "Rock Hudson of the 90s".

Oyster boy returns as clam boy - a cracked muscle, delicious smothered in vinegar. This imagined journey where I find my ideal he who stands taller than me with swarthy skin and lean muscles covering big bones, green eyes, blond red hair and a raven tattoo between his shoulder blades, ravens form a circle flying across his skin and bones to all points of the compass.

By crow post a letter from my old love at home(on dry land).

"O, I, a sailor, I wish I was on the ocean with you having sex with dead pirates and sailors and never have to deal with loss again, he is (P.) is treating me badly again he won't even give me his phone number, why is he so cruel I? I wish also we were together again but the distance is appalling I'm not blaming you. My journey is through my heart without a map or rather a map torn apart by this intense longing to find you again... you're on the seven seas perhaps this journey I'm on is a journey deep into the heart of you, O,1, a sailor, I see you at night amongst the bunks rows upon rows - sturdy cocks like some weird luna plant which at a certain hour spits out its seeds, I see you quiver under the shower light shines sweat on torsos illuminating the cabin. I'm too weary to continue now, but send you torrents of... love.


SOMETHING ELSE


I, a sailor, cannot resist telling stories. I realise that all loving seems to be the story I continue to tell myself....I'm telling my story to myself over and over again, perhaps to hypnotise myself into believing or dreaming ( while I'm all at sea) that I can only find love through death of sexuality - as I know it now... the raging inside is still there like a machine gun hidden inside a violin case just when I think I want my life to be a regular story yet knowing all the time that it will never be that.

I, a sailor, am momentarily broken down into raging and inventing stories - perhaps the two are linked somewhere or seen as a continuous journey.

a story....

The water was suddenly dead calm, the city in the distance looked like a string of pearls... black finned sharks swam lazily past. Nature itself was holding its breath - holding in each and every little death ( petite mort ) somewhere in the far past a tango played now mixed with drums and bass... echoes of "do not forget me". He rolled me over and slipped his thumb up my arsecunt. Something had changed in him, I could feel a force, a weight in him, now on me, like he wanted to leave his mark not only in me but right inside my soul, I sensing this wanted to depart on a fast boat to Singapore - but Singapore had changed so much over the years, now only two blocks of the old town the rest sanitised, white washed, no opium dens, no fresh young boys hiding behind flaming sunsets... night clubs like any where else in the world - chrome and techno and redundant ... Singapore the city where I would shit orchids and spit crickets, dream fantastic dreams, drink jissom from the most sweet, exquisite boys - fiery red cocks down my throat burning hot semen with the after taste of fish and rum ...all long gone ... please tell me there's a future... Old father Neptune - Lord of the seven seas - please tell me there's love, love like buried treasure to be found.

 

Reproach seen as a memory - you can't tell anyone anything in this life.

 

 © 1997 Bertie Marshall

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  BERTIE MARSHALL  
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 Bertie Marshall

 

 

Bertie Marshall was born in Greenwich, London 1960. At fifteen changed his name to "Berlin" and became part of a group of people known as The Bromley Contingent - the first group of Sex Pistols fans.

He is the author of seven plays and three chapbooks; Schwul, The Palace Of Faux Pas and Master Bitch. His many jobs have included: rent boy, drag queen, shoplifter and psychic.

His recently published first novel Psychoboys (Codex, U.K.) already has a cult following and has met with some well-deserved critical praise as well. He has completed a second novel Author, Fag, Gutter and is currently working on a third.

 

Excerpts of Psychoboys and an interview with Bertie Marshall can be found at the U.K. mag Spike.

 

 

 

Photo: Peter Brown