April 24th Francis Fairfax Moresby Strong
I was previously writing
But
did dry up.
About a previous life of long ago:
An ancestor of mine.
He has surfaced up so say hello.
This is an imagined scene from his true life.
October 1864. Southwark, London
I am a dog.
I lie in my own filth and vomit and slime.
I whimper and I whinge.
I stink.
I am sick.
I gnaw bones, eat scraps and gruel,
And worse than that, I am so cruel.
I am a dog.
I deserve it all
There is a hammering in my head.
A self-inflicted thumping pounding dread.
I am drunken, in a stupid, swooning stupor.
I do not want to wake.
Leave me be!!
Thump, pounding echoing noise.
Thump!
I deserve it all.
I am but a dog.
In a dreary, clearing, opiate, alcohol mist
How can I still be here in shit and piss?
I should have gone.
Gone all away.
Die! Like an old sea dog. Die.
I cannot face it any more.
And…. Why?
Why? Why? Is there a banging at my door?
They come crashing in like a tidal wave.
The sergeant, tall and strong, erect and proud
And that damned landlady, prying again.
Witch!
I see their disgust and horror
I see their despair
Of my wife, my Mary, there,
She is so ill, so thin, so still, there she lie.
Where I leave her.
Where she has and does as good to die.
I am a dog. A wild dog.
I retch into my filth.
I bark and growl, swear and howl.
I lash out in hate and fear.
As they dare come near.
He throws words at me.
They stick to me. Like slop and tar.
Words of hate and bile.
I deserve it all.
A bucket of cold, so cold, salty water over me.
What has become of me?
Once so proud.
So clear and true.
I am not the jack-the-lad sea dog of old.
No more a man.
I am just a dog.
Chains about me.
I am quiet, obedient, sullen dog.
My Mary is carried out on a wooden table top.
She is dying.
Of neglect.
I am so low, so full of remorse, of self-loathing.
As the people gathered about gloating.
They spit at me and curse me.
They know me, they know of me.
Driven to the end by a gin and rum opiate fog.
The no longer see me. Just a dog.
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