“No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job”
— T. S. Eliot
The challenge was self-imposed and wholly unnecessary: Write a poem with only ten lines per stanza and only two words per line, any length on any subject.
Here’s the result.
(It should come as a surprise to exactly no one that this piece takes an ugly turn early on then steers into it.)
Enjoy!
SHIPWRECKED
By Bradley James Weber
FIRST DAY
Nine men
One lifeboat
First Officer
Now Captain
Eight passengers
One oar
Zero rations
Endless horizon
No compass
SECOND DAY
Air: equatorial
Sun: blinding
Tongues: parched
Lips: cracked
Water: none
Less food
Nine men
One wounded
One malcontent
FOURTH DAY
No land
No ship
No respite
No rescue
Sunburned eyes
Stomach cramps
Fata Morgana
Madness brews
FIFTH DAY
One captain
Eight men
Nine straws
One short
“Why draw?”
The malcontent:
“Kill him.”
The dying:
“Yes, lord.”
DAY SIX
Eight castaways
Seven sated
One abstained
“Pure savagery.”
Bloody work
Bloody hands
Bloody sea
One lifeboat
Attracting sharks
DAY SEVEN
The malcontent
spreads dissent
“Land ho?
Ship ahoy?
Not likely.
Hunger returns!
Cowardly ‘captain,’
who’s next?
Decide already!”
DAY EIGHT
Abstainer dead,
stolen overnight.
Seven straws
Become toothpicks.
Offal overboard
Sharks return
Selene’s crown,
Luminous, enchanting
Storm’s harbinger
DAY NINE
Glorious downpour!
Quenching rain!
Huzzah! Huzzah!
Relief stillborn.
Savage lighting
Heavy gales
Rudder useless
“Grab something!”
“Hold fast!”
DAY TEN
Three lost,
Four remain.
The malcontent,
Two lickspittles,
The captain––
Badly wounded.
“Die choking.”
The malcontent:
“You first.”
DAY FOURTEEN
Sundown, starlight
Waxing moon
Pensive sea
Restless sharks
Three men––
Forward, aft,
Amidships crouched––
Ever vigilant
Entertaining hunger
DAY NINETEEN
Human bones
Thrice gnawed
Cracked, sucked
Gnawed again
No avail
Futile, exhausting
“Like prayer.”
The malcontent:
“Abandon hope.”
DAY TWENTY
Two remain.
One astern––
Tearless, broken––
Overboard slipped
Midnight’s suicide
Alone together
The malcontent
The other
Battle sleep
DAY TWENTY-NINE
S. S. Duneeden
“Captain, sir?
Lifeboat spotted,
Port bow.”
The captain:
“Anyone aboard?”
“Unknown, sir.”
“Best investigate.”
“Yes, sir.”
Word spreads
Doctor ’roused
Idle crew
Crowding rails
Captain’s command:
“Engines stop.”
Duneeden drifts
Distance closes
All hands
Holding breath
Hopeful silence
Woefully broken
Curses, prayer
Revulsion, despair
Bones bleached
Bloody thwarts
Hunger, madness
Souls abandoned
Horror’s Testimony
Witnessed, notarized
Everywhere, everywhere
Fleshy strips
Salted, drying
Nearly cured.
Asleep astern
The malcontent
Charon’s helmsman
Meat–surrounded
Peacefully cradling
Someone’s head.
It was a nightmare, getting out of L.A. . . . The desert would be bad enough all by itself.
Something big and batlike swooped through the tunnel of lights and was gone. He ignored its passage. Five minutes later it made a second pass, this time much closer, and he fired a magnesium flare. A black shape, perhaps forty feet across, was illuminated, and he gave it two five-second bursts from the fifty-calibers, and it fell to the ground and did not return again.
To the squares, this was Damnation Alley.