Dear Reader, You are about to enter
KINGS OF THE F**KING SEA
ABOUT KINGS…*
More a play or unfilmable film than a book of poems, more a wish than a journey, Kings… opens with a prologue to guide the reader.
Kings of the F**king Sea unfolds to reveal a world that exists on the edge of society but is subservient to it, a world of artists, poets, merchants, sailors, and soldiers who break themselves against the sea and the vast unknowable opportunity it represents. As one poem goes, “The world invents, the sea discloses, and irony isn’t a necessary tool for successful men.” On the sea, as in art, some make it and others die nameless, destitute of love, forgotten.
Conceived by poet Dan Boehl and artist Jonathan Marshall, Kings of the F**king Sea is the culmination of their four-year friendship and collaboration. The book features full-color images of Marshall’s drawings, paintings, collages, and sculptures, working in tandem with the poems to flesh out a beautiful, broken, psychedelic, and necessary tale of artist expression and its failure.
*Available for purchase from Birds LLC and Amazon.
Click the links below for more information:
Bombsite.com
BirdsLLC
Glasstire.com
Redfez.net
Dan Boehl’s site
Pillow, 2010
Cement
10.5×2.5×17 in
Untitled, 2010
Graphite and ink on paper
19×13.5 in
Intersection
There’s an intersection out here
converging
like a lifespan, you just see
what it lets you see.
There’s an apartment building
like a freightliner on one side,
and a garage with a minivan
on a lift.
No one drives it.
It stays there
like a fire extinguisher,
you feel safer if you don’t use it.
I’m leaving because they are filling
me with baseball, with Tom Cruise,
with hamburgers and water
bottled in Atlanta. They drive Mercedes.
They daycare their kids. They rake their lawns,
and retire. How could I ever
be one of them?
In front of the apartment, once,
I saw a midget retouching the railing
with a silver paint can.
We don’t paint
to have painting careers.
And it isn’t a voice, or expression,
or fortress or weapon.
It’s a pillow.
It’s what we dream into.
A Monochromatic Painting Rises from the Sea, 2010
Graphite and flocking on paper
18×15 in
Kings Flag, 2010
Cotton
36×60 in
Island, 2010
Flocking and glass beads on paper mounted on wood
17×12.5 in
KotFS, 2007-2010
C Print
30×40 in
Megamouth
The monster opened. I smelled
metal, hairspray and makeup.
Everyone was growing their hair long
which got tangled in the monster’s mouth.
I called for the cannon.
The gunner turned his head like a turret
and met the gaze
of the shark’s eye. I thought of
never-ending love,
the cobblestones of Baltimore,
the harbor slick with oil,
setting the water ablaze as we made way.
I thought of the drop lines
in our blistered hands,
mending the weathered foresails,
sipping limeade on the deck,
and once, a pod of whales.
When a dark hull arrives
we stand, are cut down,
and spring back like shark’s teeth.
Even the rats come out
shaking splinters against the bastard.
We’ll slaughter those who
would slaughter us
and dump their bodies in the water.
I shouted, “Don’t you realize
we’re the KINGS
OF THE FUCKING SEA?”
The eye didn’t even blink
as the cannon sounded
like a pinprick against the void.
Flag of the Cobra Sombrero, 2010
Cotton
36×60 in
Captain, 2010
C Print
16.5×30 in
Amputated Legs, 2010
Graphite on paper
13.5×16.5 in
Armistice, 2010
Paper, ink, flocking and ink-jet prints on wood
48×60 in
Wooden Leg, 2010
Wood, ink-jet prints mounted on wood
21x5x15 in