SHIP OF FOOLS ON A CRUEL SEA

by George Salamon

It was later than I thought when I first believed you, / Now I cannot share your laughter, Ship of Fools, —"Ship of Fools," The Grateful Dead, Lyrics by Robert Hunter

April Fool's Eve, 2018

Self-made darkness
Drawing us down
In a vortex of
Psychic disturbances,
Confusion of values,
Flight from consciousness,
Devaluation of knowledge, and
Abandonment of reason.

Led by a rising economic elite
With disdain for morality,
Egocentrism at the core of character.
Its heart chained to management wisdom,
Lacking passion and compassion
To grasp the human condition,
Ill-suited to struggle with our crisis
Of equality, fraternity, and hope.


George Salamon, who lives in St. Louis, MO, arrived in the United States in 1948 when, as the song says, America's bottles were still "filled."

THE SHIP OF FOOLS

by Darrell Petska

In Plato's Republic a ship of fools sailed—
can you see one now, just rounding the bend?
Already the ship lists heavily, its new captain
unskilled and lacking in sailorly knowledge.

Will the ship capsize? Chaos sweeps the deck,
its sailors bumbling their jobs as the ship veers
first toward one shore, then the other. From on high
descends a flurry of orders to right the vessel,
but their predicament grows worse by the moment.

Each sailor, believing to have the answer to their peril,
snitches and backstabs, crying foul of the rest.
Blood and curses fly, their captain at the helm inept,
or disinterested. Erratically onward they sail,
mutinous words like life jackets tossed about.

Someone barks an order—another sailor
no more skilled, rising up to wrest command,
but little does it matter: onto its side rolls the ship,
its unruly crew leaping overboard—
the captain fleeing in a lifeboat lugging gold.

Once tall and stately, the ship takes on water,
some fortunate ballast preventing its quick demise.
Will a wiser captain and crew come to the rescue?
Or will this ship, and its storied past, be remembered
for those who so miserably sailed it last?

Darrell Petska's writing appears in The Missing Slate, Whirlwind, Verse-Virtual, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, previously in TheNewVerse.News, and numerous other publications. Darrell cut short his career as a university editor to be the arbiter of his own words. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.