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[stakebait]

Arisia has inspired my dormant inner filker. Here's one about Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker. Mild, cryptic spoilers.


Ship Breaker

They call us ship breakers but that is a lie

These ships wallowed broken before we were born

We do no more than scavenge the carcasses

Of whales blown ashore by the storm

Chorus:

Why is the wasteful raptor adored

And the useful vulture despised?

Riddle me this, my vulture child,

Now it’s time to go out on your own

Remember this, my vulture child,

Before you leave meat on the bones

We drain the black blood that pools under steel skin

We spool bright copper nerves that will never more spark

We scar our own skin to make our own kin

As we crawl and scrape by in the dark

Chorus

We’re the mold on your bread

Making cures out of garbage

The worms in your corpse

making farm fields from war

the things you beget and prefer to ignore

are our harvest, and our home

Chorus

Now you’re riding too fast and too high on the winds
To see carrion comfort below and behind

Stay aloft if you can, but try not to forget

The sweet smell of rot and the salt tang of sweat

And the kin you can scavenge from those they discard

Will love fierce, and hold hard.
Chorus