A Ghost Ship Seen
by Michael Doyle

I

The mind can be deeper than an ocean
When it comes to being lost inside emotion
In these fears of being left behind
Some place deep within a wounded mind

Morphic in its senseless sensations
Where security clings for its protection
Like a cruise ship adrift on an ocean
It's the currents that set it all in motion

In the engine room, you stoke the fire
That is fed by the coals of your desire
We pretend at our sense of perfect etiquette
Though manners are chosen by those we have not met

As we eat inside that on common room
As we each contemplate the loose ends of doom
We are all fighting  the pain of feeling nothing
But inside each of us struggles to truly feel something

It is through sound argument that we reach and teach
To turn around our infant minds lost within the breech
While others give away into solid waves of dreaded fear
And others still fight to be themselves and not disappear

II

What's the price then of all our caring
To have lost one's way without losing bearing
To whose benefit are the rule lived by made
And what is it that seems to then hide in the shade

Signals received call for help with a sense of distress
They carry one the vaguest clues to which we must address
That there's no telling of the how that the lost go there
Yet, seldom is a changed course reflective of courage not fear

The crew knows better than its gravest questions asked
It's better to keep focused on the goals they've been tasked
One turns to sacrificial lamb, the other to carnivore
Man's destiny is not best argued for any less or any more

All eyes seek for the lost to find their way to recovery
Down the slopes well known yet amazingly slippery
Ghost ships sail into hell with only shadows on board
And Davy Jones cuts with the sharp edge of his rusty sword

The captain orders all to stay in their own sense of lane
As if orders divide the politely moot from those slightly insane
We reach deep for our last vestige we claim as a resource
Praying only that we might return somehow to the negotiated course

III

The captain holds forth in his awkward conversation
As the sleepless dread approaches its own destruction
And the doctor against all odds offers her services
Knowing there might yet be a need for her purposes

So much there is that will is and will remain unknown
As each seeks for the mercy that will never be shown
The second we have a clue what it is that death is about
It is there that all courage gives way to a sea of doubt

Racing across the deck of the ghost ship in its stillness
The fog lingers and the sea herself offers her chillness
The scars that we wear inside sometimes seemingly suit
Just as the fears we live bear their own worse fruit

The search party seeks for signs of passenger and crew
Without a single sign that will ever come within view
The rabbits seal their fates as they begin to quietly fall
Thus begins the descent into the mystery we live as we recall

(c) January 7, 2023  Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved