Dead Ahead

Cast off from the docks onto boundless seas
There's shops to be stocked, there are mouths to feed
Every town needs Neptune's bounties
But bringing them aground? Well, it's down to me

For the flounders, bream, crabs, cod and mackerel
Can't outcompete man, rod and tackle
And the salmon and the wrasse, barracuda and the bass
Are all grouped up with the groupers and a profit haggled

What's it worth to get your earnings from a sturgeon on a pole?
There's a lot of soul-searching when you're searching for a sole
No man is an island, but I'm fine to play the role
Living life on the horizon, it can really take atoll

What you want to risk to get a fishy
There upon a little dishy when the boat comes in?
It's a mystery, but I'm pretty sure a big'un up and hit me
Took a nibble and he broke something, ya!

I'll take tea with a spot of hake, please
Some chips, baked beans and a blob of HP
Love, craft and skill let you dominate seas
Tough graft won't kill, but a gob of green teeth might

Take you by surprise as you're scraping up the muck
No saying what you'll find, so it pays to have a look
Hauling trinkets all a-glimmer or just fishing up some dinner
Sure, I ain't much of a singer, but I'm great with catchy hooks

'Neath tides of bleak and briny
In that bed where fortunes sleep
Secrets lie beneath for finding
Weaving dread and silt for sheets

In the lambent lamps of phantoms
Flotsam all are we in time
Can you fathom what the fathoms'
Blackened chasms have to hide deep in the brine?

It takes the correct person to live off the brine
But I'm great at networking and me jobs online
Sure, maybe you'll get herding up the lobsters fine
But your fate is less certain with an ominous shrine

No, that can't be what I'm seeing, chance it's just something I've eaten
A mirage, or, perhaps, my bleeding looking glass just needs a cleaning
Heck, the hardiest of seamen can lose faculties of an evening
It's a fact of life at sea, but I'm still grappling with the feeling

That there's something coming after me, there's whispers in the tides
That crystallize in ocean foam of shifting, infinite eyes
Their ebbs and flows obsidian in twisted pitch of night
Or are the depths below, abyssal, mirrored in the skies?

Blow it, I'm a man of reason! Won't get caught in superstition
Bloke who can't keep track of real isn't a lot of use for fishing
But these catches that I've reeled are so rotten, putrid, writhen
Sallow shadows from the shallows, risen, withered and unbidden

From depths, immortal chest, enshrined abreast horizon's sprawl
Whose every crest, a breath I ride in endless rise and fall
A beating heart relentless, scribed, as tendrils strike the hull
And each a part, crescendant, chimes the yen of siren's call

Each swell imparts unspoken names as waves and senses break
As rudder carves an open vein left gaping in our wake
Though tokens raised from soaken graves may yet a fortune make
I fear for what the ocean claims in place of what we take

What's to find, harrowed craft
'Cross the lines shadows cast?
Hoist your nets, raise your pots
All is death, plague and rot
Hard to port, hard astern
Matters nought where you turn
Compass spins, stars have fled
We are all dead ahead

'Neath tides of bleak and briny
In that bed where fortunes sleep
Secrets lie beneath for finding
Weaving dread and silt for sheets

In the lambent lamps of phantoms
Flotsam all are we in time
Can you fathom what the fathoms'
Blackened chasms have to hide deep in your mind?

What's to find, harrowed craft ('neath tides of bleak and briny)
'Cross the lines shadows cast? (In that bed where fortunes sleep)
Hoist your nets, raise your pots (secrets lie beneath for finding)
All is death, plague and rot (weaving dread and silt for sheets)
Hard to port, hard astern (in the lambent lamps of phantoms)
Matters nought where you turn (flotsam all are we in time)
Compass spins, stars have fled (can you fathom what the fathoms')
We are all dead ahead (blackened chasms have to hide deep in your mind?)