5 - Submarine Hate Poetry: My Statement

My Statement

I could not tell you where or when or how the hell what I have been bound to by contract was created. In a life of despair and self-hatred, it isn’t uncommon to miss the details. The process of assembling this edifice of self flagellation is shrouded in a rich varnish of mystery, but I have my own speculations on its origins. The ship was forged under the direction of unholy passions and dark spirits. It is not obvious, this feeling, this preternatural knowledge. Not like the visible change of men’s personalities when they arrive here. That is one of the hints. The other hints come one by one. They must be carefully lured, like the squirrels old men feed in the park. No one knows why, but the truth and men distrust one another -- probably because they are so unfamiliar. To find the hints, one must be alone. Truly alone and beyond the strict influence of others. One must be in a dim place. That is not hard, there are many dim places around this ship. The sailing roster is full of dim places. When you find the location and the right time, it comes. It drips up from the cold, gritty deck plates, ropy sticky wisps of putrid incense. It is the souls of a thousand men they have senselessly sacrificed on this vessel. Sacrificed simply because a higher position allowed it. Because they could. Not even the dignity to name a god for whom the sacrifice took place. If you patiently wait in your time of understanding, those thousand men will whisper the name. It starts slow and deliberate, like a sleeping lover's breath. In the background, behind the action, you can hear the ship’s heart beat. Fans and pumps, whirring and turning, like an atheist’s prayer wheel. Moving and going no where. Electric symbols of Hell. Of life. In time, if you can withstand the agony and empathy you endure in your heart, the men’s voices will swirl into the Monsoon, into the Sierra, into the Nor’easter, into the wind-walking demon, Ithiqua itself. The name of this god comes from their mouths, an invader riding proudly, his horse over the corpses. “Career,” they howl. It haunts you in your private apocalypse. As you bond to the cold metal framing, abhorred and transfixed, revelations occur. The reactor is fuels by souls. This is not fantasy or speculation. This is fact. A “pipeline” has been established to ensure the nuclear reactor is always provided with fresh souls. When the new ones come you can physically differentiate the unbalance between those who come, and those who are here. The unblemished have too much soul. They don’t know it, but their soul panics as if a bird in a cat stalked cage. Light and feathered, it beats about the bars on the inside until it is dead and featherless. On the outside, the prey vainly attempts to motivate others around himself. The words pour like piss on a flat rock, with just as much meaning. Soon, with dark eyes and knotted hair, this parasitic host makes his duly appointed rounds mumbling, ”I don’t give a fuck.” When men get on the outside, out of the reactor's sphere of influence, they come back to life. They live. The bird, beaten and featherless, grows back its plumage and starts to sing. That is how you know it is a fact. You can know it to be true by this: When a hatch is opened, and a spear of sunlight stabs the engineroom in the heart, dusty oil suspended in air drips off the shaft of light. The men stir with slavering animal hunger for the outside. For the air. For the light. A vain attempt to temporarily regain their feathers. What those above you tell you and what the heart perceives are very different. I have been told that the reactor is filled with uranium. Do you know what uranium is? It is a word for the culmination of all the old gods. Of Loki and Quetzacoatl. Of Satan and Santa Claus. Of Zeus, Hera and Cookie Monster. All trapped inside, feeding on your soul. Uranium. A nether-place. Ubiquitous and unmentionable. The spiritual blackmail and ritual that must have gone on, to get them in there. Packed tight, like genie slum-housing. Hyman G. Rickover: Slumlord. An overtone from Uranium that comes out in the way crew’s berthing is designed, the way we live. So much influence in that lead shrouded sarcophagus. Uranium: The place where old gods go. In their image, we were created. Sacrifice. Contrition. Penance. Base genuflection. Prostration. All feeble attempts at immortality. At pleasing the irrational. Quite some futile passion, creating hope beyond reason.

That is all I know about the current ship's casualty