Go Home Sailor By John Scott HolmanMar 09, 20120Artwork by John Scott Holman Go home sailor... The waters have all dried up. The ocean has fled and your ship sags uselessly on the rocks. Behold the rotting fish! The cruel heat has reduced them to simmering, gelatinous pools. Yes, it is a strange graveyard sailor, and you'd best go home. Go home to your poor mother. She is old and she is dying, Yet she waits up for you at night and leaves the porch light lit. Restless sailor, what is it you seek? I have seen you wandering in the gray October mist, Trudging wearily past tombstones that jut from the earth like the crooked teeth of some lunatic hillbilly. What has happened to the world? There is nothing left but dust and dreamers. So what do you dream of sailor, and what is this strange yearning that stalks you? It is a melancholy figure and it walks beside you in a dead man's clothes. It speaks and the voice puts the fear in you, making your flesh feel like a field of wilting flowers. I beg you to go home.... You belong there always. Remember? Remember?
In that other time you played kick the can in the sweet heat of a summer night. For hours you played. One by one the others yawned and disappeared into the chilling suburban darkness... but you stayed on. And still you stay, searching for that purple, twilight, childhood something. The neighborhood is dark save one light. Your mother leaves it lit. It is a sad little lighthouse, ever summoning you to the shore. Go home sailor, please go home...