Baby Boy

2013 David Jasmin-Green

You were once a mighty man, a man of renown
(or at least that's what you liked to think),
but all of a sudden you lost it all, baby boy,
all of a sudden every last scrap of decency
was bleached out of your sorry carcass
by the indifference of a far mightier ocean
and the brutal, relentless waves.

You were cast overboard in the fearsome Atlantic
to drown in a battered, ill-sealed oil drum.
Remember now?
'Sleep with the fishes, mother-fucker!'
the gloating bastards cried as they rapped your clawing fingers
and hammered on the lid. Your makeshift coffin
sank deliciously slowly, and your incompetent executioners
sped off, laughing their iniquitous bollocks off.

You have no idea how you escaped a permanent plot
in Davy Jones's inky locker, but some time later
you were washed up on a desolate beach,
a bleak and barren island of blank anonymity,
a bitter land peopled by callous, pretend people
that fought over scraps like dogs and conveniently
looked the other way when you were in need.

You screamed in silent, dehydrated rage at your great loss,
forgetting for a long moment that you still had life, of sorts.
“I'll tell you a story,” you croaked at the band of scruffy boys
that silently stared at your misfortune before
poking you with sticks and searching the sodden pockets
of your ruined Saville row suit.
They would have chanced a kick or two, you guessed,
if you didn't somehow stagger to your feet
and make clear your sparse surviving masculinity
and your rabid, wholly unruffled indignation.
“A story of corruption and greed, a story
of impotent fury at the handful of men and women
that I genuinely believed I could rely on in my time
of greatest need, men and women that slowly,
almost imperceptibly joined the ranks
of slavering demon kind.”

“We don't wanna listen to your sob story, mate,”
the ragamuffins chuckled, wandering off along the debris strewn coast
while you dropped helplessly to your knees and agonisingly
spewed out your last unappetising salty meal.
“We've heard it all before. We'll come back later
to poke out your bloodshot eyes, maybe, just for a laugh -
if the friggin' gulls don't get the fuckers first.”
That was when you slipped into a long, dreamless
and desperately sad sleep. Little did you know, but though
the gulls and crabs and sundry beachcombers
started queuing up for their forbidden feast
your last friend in the whole wide world
was rushing along the sand to your aid.