O.K., this is how it goes:
They box you, they wrap you,
They send you away.
Leaving you no prospects
They ship you to the islands
Where every ship has its mooring.
In the morning it's the usual, casual boredom,
Where everything, and everybody, floats
In a swirling haze; purple, or, otherwise.
Dreams from the previous night's sleep
Are kept onboard in a tin can.
Mine was on a bridge in Paris, over the Seine,
With Notre Dame squatting in the distance;
Nighttime was about to happen causing the landscape
To appear as one big dark canvas, with a smattering of lights
Twinkling like Van Gogh's Starry Night painting.
When I looked over into the water I saw the faces
Of a lot of dead fish and all the artists who had
lived and died in the city of lights...
When I awoke you were there looking down over me;
Your green cat-eyes staring; your long brown hair hanging
Down so exquisitely; I felt the waves of last night's shebang
Swallow us both whole. Then the alarm clock rang and I banged
My bean hard on the overhead beams realizing again where I was,
And wondered how I'd get free of all this. Then I remembered,
There is no way out, but in. So, I swung the ship leeward
And came to the nearest port hoping to find my lady of the island.
All I found were locals selling rum and papaya juice.
I wondered if Ernest Hemingway had ever been in these waters.
But that information would be of no use, not now that all
Maritime was running out and soon we would be back on the high seas
Heading towards some new swashbuckling adventure.
I hoped for relief somehow, someway, someday; hopefully soon.
For the gas tanks were running empty.
And the dreams, hopefully of Paris, were about to begin again.
With or without this landlubber!