Our Man in Europe/dave delacroix/ IN THE GALLEYS-Antonio, B.C.
"As a RULE, they'd pass the bucket so we could take a shit. Urination was of no consequence. The Over-seer who whipped the Lackeys often let 3 at a time UN-chain, to bathe - on a Neck-leash, drop over the Galley's awesome side where washing, masturbating, pissing and defecating could be executed and/or enjoyed in some spartan sense of privacy. In WAR, ships came and went, many died, Ships were well run, good or bad and the work was driven, always harsh and sometimes cruel. Yet survivors prevailed. A Slave elite. We knew who we were. The dumbest. The Intellects! They seemed - to me? - to prevail, where-as those wretches in-between, flayed?... And all the time we pulled those mammoth Oars.
Some of the Lads sang SONGS, firstly, then descended into a COLD silence? Some: WITS, quickly became UN-witted. And despite the Lash never returned to any semblance of frugal gaiety or intelligence; could not ROW, hated by the Over-seer and line-Oarsmen alike and were tossed overboard to the ever shadowing sharks? -And all the time, those mammoth Oars we pulled.
Aristotle was - for a while - an Oars-man friend of mine, shared my Oar/shared my jokes (the Over-seer, too) whilst all the time I thought of a girl I once knew before - for theft - I was committed to these Galleys? She was from Lydia. She was fair? And now, I believe, married and with two bold sons; a story I should NEVER have shared with my Oar-mate, Aristotle. It broke his heart and his
spirit broke, confounded, and his Soul now lies buried in the Deep; whilst all the time we pulled those mammoth oars.
As a RULE they'd pass the bucket so we could defecate, fart and shit. Urination was of no consequence. The Over-seer, who took a liking to my sense of humor which inspired my fellow Oarsmen to conform and excel in their subservience, acknowledged my physical disintegration after so many years at the Oar? And on the arrival of fresh blood, muscle and flesh, enabled, aging me, Antonio, to be abandoned off the shores of Magna Grecia, now Sicily, where-in a cave by a silver sea, I live and scribe these token words..."
c 2016/davedelacroix/April/Modica-Sud, Sicily.
