The Mad Evening Tide

10 weeks ago by @chrismyth02

Liner Notes

This was a write for the Story Cube challenge. My roll was “a clock (at 4:00), pirate, robot, dinosaur skeleton, and action was something burning”

I remembered a story about a strange castle in the Outer Banks in which it was purported that individuals gathered to drink from a skull chalice claimed to be Blackbeard’s skull. I imagined a protagonist participating in this ritual and subsequently going mad. Living in the present, the future and the past all at once.

Open to collabs if anyone wants to provide music. I hear an eerie chanty or carnival vibe but open to interpretation as always. I do prefer to sing on this if we collaborate, looking for instrumentation only.

#storycube #needsmusic #needscollab

Lyrics

The rusty hands make cursed ticks
Loud enough to make seaworthy captains sick
There’s a light off the bow as the sun plays tricks
As the mad evening tide rolls on

“All hands on deck!” shouts a wretched throat
As the masts overshadow a battered boat
When the plunder is counted he’ll grin and gloat
As the mad evening tide rolls on

When you took Blackbeard's cup to your lips to toast
‘Round an ancient fire with ancient ghosts
And you cursed the name of their long-gone traitor
You didn’t know then but you’d figure out later

When you wake to the same erratic sound
Ticking loud though you’re now on stable ground
Far from vessels that creak and heave and bound
Where the mad evening tide rolls on

And you rub your eyes loose of the Sandman’s dust
But his dream persists, like the mariner’s musk
Through your cell phone’s insistence on the day’s bustle
Somewhere mad evening tides roll on

When you took Blackbeard's cup to your lips to toast
‘Round an ancient fire with ancient ghosts
And you cursed the name of their long-gone traitor
You didn’t know then but you’d figure out later

No mechanical man would understand
Who’d bargain their soul to ravage the land
For the greed and the good of themselves alone
To become antique cars and dinosaur bones

Comments