Sea Shanty

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sea Shanty

 

 

Once I thought I had pain for my oceanliner, but

it was a clipper ship, a visitor skimming

the shallows of easy tears, creaking

in every board its promise of moonlight drowning

the dark-kissing sea in silver flakes,

of fools' journey's-end a Crusoe'd sort of shipwreck

where everything needed is salvageable,

of undiscovered places to find but never know.

But that of course was not pain.

Pain is an ocean

without any ship, flowerless and vast,

no islands of palms and coconuts

no brown eyes dancing

from the landward side of the reef

to blunt

the sharp-split wreckage of spars and bones,

no Man Friday

to carry my white man's burden for me,

to feed me 

on conch meat and keep me alive

with all the driftwood exotica of empire.

 

There is only

the cold that pierces too deep

before it numbs, the struggling silence

 

that floats the water

that slides through my hands

and the

 

constant 

unbearable fear

of breathing it in.

December 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Word Garden Word List at

Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Sea Spray, 1908, pen & ink watercolor, ©Harold Sohlberg   Fair Use

Untitled, ©Zdzislaw Beksinki      Fair Use

 

Til My Ship Comes In

 

 

 

Til My Ship Comes In

 

 

 

 

 

 

Becalmed on a sea of smoke

a nowhere that could be anywhere

I made an indigo wind

to fill my sails.

 

"It's just enchantment, " you said,

"It's not personal." as

the voyage began

to tick down

 

kiss by kiss, bookmarks

in the wildness

floating your stopwatch eyes.

"Time's up!" you said,

and changed the rules.

I thought everything not experimental

was forbidden, but it seems heartbreak

will ruin a boat.

The shipwreck was easy,

but the distance to shore

was a bitch. Still

but still,

 

better to drown

than to straddle a broken bench

and bleed, bailing a sinking boat

with no bottom. 

April 2024

posted for WGWL at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Boat of the Mermaid, ©Sabin Balasa via internet Fair Use

A Rocky Shore, Iona  ©Samuel Peploe, via internet    Fair Use

Beach With Absence of Yellow

 

 

 

 

 

Beach With Absence Of Yellow

 

 

 

 

Because

you were gone

the sun was a gin-soaked gypsy

in a yellow dress

going inevitably down

down where sticky darkness

wants to go, sliding from

the mouths

 

of ruined sailors

whose pleasures led them to the overflow,

drowned down gold-bright waves, row on row,

to wash up sorry scarecrows

on the shore, back-stabbed and 

broken to the empty land once more.

Because

everything is gone,

the morning sun is sober as a cat,

bored and batting at the palm-leaf's knees.

The sailor's flattened hat is

shredded on an unpersuaded breeze

that only wants to quit

 

and all along the boulevard

cigarette butts still roll,

the mirrors lie,

the telephones ring.

 

 

March 2023

 

 

 

 

posted for

Word Garden Word List: Randy Newman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Venus and the Sailor, 1935 ©Salvador Dali 

Vegetal Puppets, 1938 ©Remedios Varo

 

 

 

 

Season's Whisper

 

 

 

Season's Whisper

(A Quadrille)

 

 

Birds falter

from the sky. Kapitans cry.

Bodies lie,

blind eyes on streets

rubbed down to bone.

 

Still

the season whispers.

 

Living wings fly,

buds swell like grief unbound.

The wilding wind 

knows nothing

of our long drown.

 

The season whispers.

Life is found.

 

 

April 2022 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for dVerse Poets:

Quadrille

and 

for earthweals' weekly challenge:

Radical Hope

Note: "..Kapitan is a commissioned officer rank ..in..the NATO officers rank system..[adopted by Ukraine,]used to specify commanding officers of company-sized units..."~wikipedia

Images:Detail of Scene in Bucha, Ukraine, April 2, 2022 after Russian retreat, ©Reuters/Zohra Bemsemra, cropped to sepia,  Fair Use

Magnolia buds against March tree canopy, 2016, © joyannjones

 

The Day Before Gone

 

The Day Before Gone

 

It was the day before gone.
The strophe began on

 a sun weak with fever,

a sky of grey primer 

because plague hit the painters

 before they managed the blue. 

 

The tepid air was fragrant with 

malfeasance, but the dumbshow

never paused.

It was noon on the sea of shadows.

All through the potential zeros

bug-scudding over the whine-

dark waves ran a shiver, a dread,

the sodden fog of the sailor

at the rocks too busy with rum

 and scrimshaw to have bothered

with learning to swim.

 

The sirens and the kraken laughed

in antiphons, tatting the antistrophe

 from the rust-wire wreckage.

It was the hour before the reckoning

but the only text on the wall read

"It can't happen here."

Pulpits burned, preachers prowled

like panthers

among the singed dollar bills.

 

Locusts

ate the hedge funds. Vultures ate

the venture capitalists, and

politicians ate the vultures

til the darkness seethed 

with undigested bones.

Then finally

over the feeble,

failure-fumed pandemonium

Dawn came with her

exterminator's smile.

December 2021

posted for 

Shay's Word List

Images: Both Untitled, by Zdizlaw Beksinski, copyright held by The Histoical Musem in Sanok Poland

Fair Use