CCLIXe - The Good Ship : Fit the Fifth

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This is the fifth part of a five-part post. The first part is here.

The Good Ship
An Agony in five Fits.

Fit the Fifth

They sought it with spreadsheets, they sought it with guile
They pursued it without any pity;
They had countless reviews that, once in a while,
Resulted in another committee.

◊

The ocean was red, there was a fearful rip,
The water was full of wrecks;
Strange creatures swam around the ship
With long and scaly necks.

“Rise to the occasion!” the Captain cried
“We’ll give our foe a beating!
Into the jaws of calamity we’ll ride
But first we’ll hold a meeting.”

The Bosun took the minutes, the Captain took the floor,
“I admit that things are looking rather choppy.
But don’t take notes, I have an electronic whiteboard
And can give you all a copy.”

“You plan looks fine, as far as it goes”
Said the Fool, who knew a thing or two.
“If it has a flaw, it is that it truly shows
That you really need some crew.”

Now, finally sensing the coming disaster,
The Captain went down below
And return to the deck with the Trader
And cried “Row, you bastard row!”

(solo)

The Captain prowls the ship at night
But all the crew have taken flight,
We are the Ghost Ship
The served up on toast ship,
Could the last one out dim the lights.
The lights,
Could the last one out dim the lights?

◊◊◊

Epilogue

Thus I woke from my troubled sleep;
It had truly been a dream, most strange.
I marveled that my brain would keep
Such nonsense, within its range.

Surely such a story is fiction at best,
With no chance of it being true?
I cleared my mind of the whole silly mess
And bid the mad dream ‘adieu’.

La Fin.

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© 2011 J Cosmo Newbery
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CCLIXd - The Good Ship : Fit the Fourth

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The Good Ship
An Agony in five Fits.

Fit the Fourth

They sought it on bridges, they sought it with charts
They even used pivot tables.
They dissected it into it’s component parts
But then could not read any of the labels.

◊

They sailed away for a week and a day
‘Til the landscape looked familiar to some.
It seems they had sailed in a circular way
And were back where they started from.

I think we’re in trouble, the Captain confessed
From the bubbles within his bath.
“Contact Admiralty, send a request
For a pilot to plot our path”.

A pilot in a kilt was reserved
To steer them through the seas.
While no-one heard what he observed,
They all admired his knees.

The Pilot said “I know the way
To reach the Promised Land”
But if the Captain cared he didn’t say
And dismissed him out of hand.

“My lot in life’s is to pilot ships
You’ve a need for me no more”
So he hitched his kilt to his boney hips
And waded to the shore.

They hoisted the sails high up the mast
And sailed on for a day or two.
The Captain turned to the Trader and asked
“Um…does this place look familiar to you?”

(duet)

No-one knows why we’re here
And how to sail is far from clear
We are the Good Ship
The misunderstood ship
And no-one knows how to steer.
To steer,
And no-one knows how to steer.

(Continued here)

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© 2011 J Cosmo Newbery
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CCLIXc - The Good Ship : Fit the Third

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The Good Ship
An Agony in five Fits.

Fit the Third

They sought it with discounts, they tried the hard sell,
They promised the earth and sky
What worked so well when put in Excel
In reality, could never fly.

◊

The Purser called a meeting, there was panic in his eyes,
“From the books, I present my findings:
The budget’s shot: our costs are on the rise
And our income is dead, flat-lining.

The Trader said “Oh Captain my dear,
It’s been months since I sold, it’s true,
But you could save a lot of money , it’s clear,
If you reduced the size of the crew.

“But good crew are so hard to find”
The Fool muttered to himself.
The Master woke and brief opined:
“Bah! You can get them off the shelf!”

“Sack some crew”, the Trader said,
“They’re a dime a dozen if we need some more!”
Offended, some jumped overboard
And swam off to the shore.

“But”, said the Fool, “and I’ve said it oft before”,
You’ve trimmed well beyond the fat.
The muscle’s gone and the carcass is raw.
You wont get far with that.

With the crew now reduced to three
The ship went nowhere fast.
It sat in the waters of a red ink sea
While others sailed on past.

Chorus

Perhaps we’re abandoned, perhaps we’re cursed,
It’s hard to tell which one is worst,
We are the Good Ship
The misunderstood ship
But we are either stopped or in reverse.
Reverse.
We are either stopped or in reverse.

(Continued here)

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© 2011 J Cosmo Newbery
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CCLIXb - The Good Ship : Fit the Second

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The Good Ship
An Agony in five Fits.

Fit the Second

They sought it in spats, They lured it with wheat
They hunted it beyond the square
They looked where they had looked only last week
And were amazed that it still wasn’t there.

◊

Admiralty sent a message trough
With some cheese and buttered snails.
“Go north without any further ado,
It’s time to hoist your sails.”

The Fool said “But it’s beyond our borders
The Purser feared the cost
The Captain said “I have my orders
The Crew cried out “We are lost!”.

The Trader was just tickled pink
For she secretly knew the worst:
That she couldn't sell an icy drink
To someone with a thirst.

The Captain was oblivious to what was in his hold
But from his act you couldn’t tell it.
The Trader knew but never told
In case she had to sell it.

The Fool said to the Trader one day
“Pray, what is it that you sell?”
“This ship” she said in an off hand way
“Is not provisioned well.”


“The hold is full of corn and wheat
But I want to sell black beans.
And I am sure that my books would look so sweet
If we traded salad greens.”

“But”, said the Fool, “if our cargo is wheat and corn,
Shouldn’t we be trading that?”
The Trader sneered and replied with scorn:
“Trust me, I know where the market’s at.”

Chorus

We sail in search of figures in black
We zig, we zag, we jibe and tack.
We are the Good Ship
The misunderstood ship
For every step forward we take two back.
Two back
For every step forward we take two back.

(Continued here)

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© 2011 J Cosmo Newbery
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CCLIXa - The Good Ship : Fit the First

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It is human nature to imagine the real when there is only the imaginary.
Any resemblance of the characters in this tale to other people, living, dead, real or imaginary,
is purely co-incidental.

Illustrations: Antonella Castelli tarot cards.


The Good Ship
An Agony in five Fits.

Prologue

I had been reading the Snark,
Carroll’s great tale,
The day had gone, it was quite dark,
It seems I’d drunk a little ale…

A wave of weariness filled my head
And, with no need for counting sheep,
I lay my head upon the bed
And drifted off to sleep.

And as in uffish sleep I slept
A dream most odd unrolled.
I give you now what my memory’s kept
Before the tale gets cold.



Fit the First

They sought it with razors, they sought it with pens
They chased it with a baguette
They cornered it every now and then
But it always slipped their net.

◊

The Captain was the dogged type,
With scowl and under-bite.
Much of what he said was tripe
But, as Captain, always right.

He seemed to be unduly scared
Of any knowledge transfers
He’d ask questions, as if he really cared,
But never listened to the answers.

The Bosun was the nominal head
And prayed five times a day.
No-one understood a word he said
And preferred it stay that way.

The Purser kept the cash required,
His smile as sweet as honey.
He said they could buy as they desired,
As long as they spent no money.

The Master’s job was to tend to the crew
To see them properly fed
But seems at a loss to know what to do
And spent all day in bed.

The Trader was always beautifully dressed
In clothes from the Italian spring.
She look so good that no-one guessed
That she had never sold a thing.

The ship had a Fool, a harmless buffoon,
Who watched the charade with dismay
He’d rant at length on a warm afternoon
But they turned their heads away.

Chorus

The ship is full of poor lost souls
No-one here knows their roles
We are the Good Ship
The misunderstood ship
Our sails are up but full of holes,
Full of holes.
Our sails are up but full of holes,

(Continued here)


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© 2011 J Cosmo Newbery
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XIX - The Poetry Challenge

An Agony in Four Fits and a Poem.

I.
Where the players are introduced to the crowd.

There was a time when there was peace throughout the land
And life was milk and honey
When all things were considered, it was rather grand
And well done eggs were runny.

A fair young Maiden entered this idyll
And hearts went all aflutter
She grabbed their attention and had a fiddle
She melted them like butter.

Like hapless candles fluttering around a moth
The Gumshoe was first to break
He threw down a glove made of the finest cloth
Which the Knight was loathe to take.

But take it he did, their relationship terse;
They waited the Maiden’s decree.
Fidelity was the given task; plus a verse
About some harmless drudge named Lee.


II.
Where the players are jostling for position.

The Gumshoe fretted while the Knight sipped his wine
But others had entered the ring
The smart money moved onto the Rottie, K9
Fidelity already his thing.

But the stumbling block that was causing most grief
Was the mandatory topic, Lee.
“To be writing about him is beyond belief”
Said the Knight. The others had to agree.

Lillie and Lux came to play. “We want to know:
Can we take Lee when it’s over?
The Maiden can go to the cop or Cosmo,
She can even run off with Rover.”

So, dear reader, the lines are drawn, words have been said;
We are slowly progressing the scenes;
Fidelity remains to be hit on the head;
Does anyone know what it means?


III.
Where the Knight writes on fidelity.

The Knight looked down at his blank serviette
And wondered what to write
Help me Sancho! There must be some angle to get
On the others in this fight.

The Gumshoe, said Sancho, will view it felonious
That’s what policemen do.
Perhaps you should heed the words of Polonius
And “To thine self be true”?

Now, the dog of course, is an outside chance
While Percy’s chasing robbers;
But really what woman gives a second glance
To a hairy beau that slobbers?

It was Percy, for Mayden, who started this fight,
A copper for a gal;
Under the circumstances, it sounds right,
If I use a villian-elle.

◊◊◊

The Poem

Lassie.

Curled up beside him close at night,
She was contented as a lassie could be.
And the flame in her heart burned bright.

She adored him deeply, with all her might
In the place that she most wanted to be,
Curled up beside him close at night.

She was pure as the snow is crisp and white
‘Til the day she chanced upon Lee;
And the flame in her heart burned bright.

Her happiness soared to reach new heights
Never before had she felt so free.
Curled up beside him close at night.

She asked with an accent, passingly slight:
Did you say you would marry me?
And the flame in her heart burned bright.

The depth of her love was easy to see;
Some things we learn are meant to be;
Curled up beside him close at night.
And the flame in her heart burned bright.

◊◊◊


IV.
Where the circus leaves town.

Sancho, the poem is writ, our job complete,
We can but win or fail,
And having stayed long enough to compete
It is time to hit the trail.

You have been so loyal, I must thank you so,
You helped me stay the course
Good luck, my man, you are free to go
And, yes, you can have my horse.

There’s nothing so sad as a circus ground
When all the crowd’s dispersed;
The grass is trampled, the bunting’s come down,
But what’s become of those ‘versed’?

Percy is strutting the policeman’s domain
K9 is entering dog shows,
Poor Lee has slipped into obscurity again
Mayden is posing for photos.


[THE END]