A Run Ashore

This free verse poem is my fourth and final poem in the ‘Kildare’ series. The poem comes with a trigger warning for those who may be offended by some of the harsh realities of life.


Listen to: A Run Ashore


The smell of stale sweat and tropical damp
pervaded the stairs and the grubby room,
where we sat with our backs to the wall,
dripping in a humid thirty degrees,
with knees pressed hard against the bed,
which entirely filled the dim-lit room.

Mama-san appeared with two naked women,
and opened us a bottle of Tiger beer each.
They introduced themselves politely;
I didn’t catch their bar-names or care,
for they resembled Laurel and Hardy,
Ollie, tall and plump; Stan, thin as a robber’s dog.

The simple thought of a naked woman
is often enough to prick the arousal
of a roaming adolescent seaman.
Yet Ollie and Stan inspired nothing in me,
and I found my interest drained
as complete as the beer in my bottle.

I admit they presented a curious sight,
for when Ollie produced a cucumber,
mounted one end and Stan took the other,
to thrust at each other in tandem
with moans of faux ecstasy—‘Enjoy, enjoy!’
I winced and screwed shut my eyes.

Ollie passed the cucumber deep within,
and with a clench of well-trained muscles,
and a ‘huzzat’ worthy of an Imran Khan,
lobbed it across the room at Stan
who caught it, lubed and loaded herself,
and hurled the veg to the boundary.

The women tossed veg
and other toys across the double bed
amid raucous shouts of glee;
I, hysterical with embarrassed laughter,
longed to return to the street,
or the safety of my ship.

I wondered then, and many times since,
what drives dull minds, aye, like mine,
to demand the abasement of others—and ourselves,
for our arousal in circus acts
shameful and grotesque,
like performing seals.

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