Bellamy's Crew
Men of feckless irresponsibility who scorned those with a home, preferring the flat horizons of seas than the cramped walls and cubicles of sedentary living.
They neatly sidestepped whole generations that had been bound in chains, poisoned and trapped. Bellamy danced around in a merry circle, leading his crew to slip the chains, spit the poison and vault the walls. The human cogs watched in rage and screamed, calling them vagabonds, dirty reprobates and lazy good-for-nothing scum.
Tipping his hat to the odious stares, Bellamy caroused, a life lived with zest and laziness.
“Why if he had wanted us to work he would not have created this wine”
He would extend the bottle and wink:
“With a skinful of this, would you rush out to commit economics?”
The crew readily assented, despite fear and hunger never being far at hand.
Work was often an issue, despite being purveyors of rare services and desirable expertise. Sought after in a world ruled by psychotic jackals, devoured by ruthless vultures and shat upon by all those above, Bellamy and his crew dine delicately with the vultures, sidestep the shit and elegantly remove the bone from the rabid jackals, never forgetting to kindly share it along with other miscreants found along their way. Believing, to a man, that you couldn’t be truly happy when surrounded by other people’s wretchedness.
“How can you make merry if those around you are not?” Bellamy would earnestly intone.
Mangled cosmic beauties refusing the well-worn yoke that had so effectively ensnared many of their kind in a daily grind. They looked through you and to each other, face to face bound by the unwavering solidarity that is forged and tempered in the fiery furnace of shared misery.
In their new work, the young ragamuffins of old had discovered, if not peace, at least an ordered chaos that enabled further transgressions and delinquent pleasures.
Virtues and graces, those little niceties that once marked the boundaries of our civilisations.
The fevered craziness of our system, that manically eats and then regurgitates ever-increasing portions of our world. The digested slop is safely stripped of the original beauty and shorn of any uniqueness that potentially provided meaning. Amongst such homogenous wastes and imploded landscapes did Bellamy and his crew joyfully tread. Nonetheless, they too were spinning chaotically in orbits, yet perhaps with a greater beauty than this post-industrial realm’s well-worn groove, where solitude and hunger stalk the land, destroying all in its wake.
Every historical encounter with a native people grew into a metaphorical and sometimes literal genocide. Any and all means for autonomous living are brutally stripped away, unique languages erased and entire cosmologies bludgeoned.
Every original way of seeing the world has been puréed into venomous mush.
A pointed look from Bellamy is the cue for Yanez to ask:
“What do we have left to lose?”
With a face half satyr and half enlightened prophet, Bellamy responds, addressing the whole crew:
“Nothing. This will be a good deed lads and most likely the last one we do!”
Yanez, his wiry frame gesticulating wildly, a reminder of his more indulgent heroin days, intones: “Bellamy, to a man we, would lay our lives down for you” The rest of the crew rumbles in assent.
“Whose ship?” bellows Bellamy.
Before the phrase even escapes his lips, the words are drowned out by waves of
“Our ship! Our ship Our ship!”.
A rare smile cracks his weathered visage. He stares back gleaming at the frenzied crew, as they shout themselves hoarse with fervent glee. Keen eyed observers may even spy a wet glimmer in the corner of one eye.
Their path will not be free of hardship, but it shall be filled with joy in defiance, communion in mischief, and a stubborn refusal to abandon the art of living.
