My right ear has triple tinnitus.
It's true. I kid you not.
First there is the deep, low mourn of a foghorn,
with a louder high pitched ring above.
But stuck somewhere in between
is a beautifully sad Charlie Parker saxophone number.
It's soft notes range frome mid to low and drown
the foghorn and annoying ring while carrying
me away to dream.   My own nightly internal
Charlie Parker radio.

r ~  23Jan14

I watched adrift on a putrid plank
That had saved me once before
‘Twas the elusive Pride of the Pacific
Constructed in ‘74

Her bronze bells and mighty foghorn
Commanded all to make way
And the tides knelt beside her feet
To congregate as they say:

“Tis pitiful, such punishment
Bestown upon the Ancient Blue
Our vengeance creeps forth each day
And will drown this peace askew.

Their corpulence, disgusting
As they carouse all day and night
Limiting themselves to their marvels”
Alas! A human they spied in sight!

“The humans have rejected you
From their blissful celebration
Now let us stir up trouble
For complete annihilation!”

With swift currents bombarding,
The passengers fled with haste
And in one implacable calamity,
The ship was left to waste

The bronze bells won’t resound
With the ship flipped on its hull
The foghorn’s left to drown
As beauty is left to null.

I sobbed adrift a putrid plank
Never abandoned from the start
“Such horrors would go unnoticed
If humanity had the heart!”

for now I don't want to know where I just came from
nor how long it's been
I don't want to picture the blisters nor the bleeding
nor smell the fumes
I don't want to remember the flood nor how the leak
was sprung
I don't want to hear about who perished and who survived
nor think about who might still be threading water
for now
the dead will have to bury the dead
the sick will have to tend the sick
the broken will have to help mend the broken
and themselves
as we do, as we must do
for now
I don't want to know about who fired the first shot
nor whether or not I'm going to drown in this life raft
for now
the foghorn, the light house, the shore
the lapping of water beneath me
for now
the foghorn
the light house
the shore
the lapping
the shore
the light house
the foghorn
the lapping
the water

Loony Tunes

Bugs Bunny is my favorite rabbit,
watching him became my habit.
He was smart, funny and two steps ahead,
his popularity was very widespread.
His best friend was Daffy Duck,
he never did have the same luck.
Rabbit season, duck season,
rabbit season, duck season,
watching them, I needed no reason.
Speedy Gonzales was so very quick,
this fast mouse was also a *****.
Owned his own pizza place,
won a gold metal, at the local rat race.
Yosemite Sam was a short tempered man,
killing Bugs and Daffy was always his plan.
He's a liar, a cheat and a sore loser,
maybe he should have been a drug user.
Tasmanian Devil was a tornado of destruction,
he never needed any kind of introduction.
Foghorn Leghorn never saw a negative situation,
I say, I say boy was his favorite quotation.
Pepe Le Pew was a French skunk,
women loved his smelly *****.
Marvin The Martian was from Mars,
his laser gun would leave you with scars.
Tweety was an antagonizing canary,
lived with Granny, and flew like a crafty fairy.
Sylvester was Granny's pet cat,
him and Tweety always went *** for tat.
Road Runner was so very fast,
said beep beep as Wile E Coyote he passed.
Never fell for those Acme supplies,
getting blown up was his ultimate demise.
Porky Pig was just happy to be included,
the, the that's all folks, is how this will be concluded.

how jealous I am
It's confined me to my room
to my eyes
perhaps my lips, parted
or the curve between my neck and shoulders
-- but only one at a time

Never in bright sunlight;
the foghorn sounds
a warning
to anyone who might get close and hear my voice

Dearest, born so late in life
I see you crying alone
And yes... you are alone.

there is no one to follow any
more
curly headed boy hiding in your mother's skirt
That part is over.

Hold me
publicly,
so I know it's real.

Nothing could be warmer than my tears,
and isn't it true you felt a chill?

My name is--

Sensing the loss of you
Was hard, raw and angry
The realisation that you would not be mine
Stung like seawater
And howled like a foghorn
For months, seeing you cut like a knife
Hot, fat tears rolling down my cheeks
As I mourned the loss of your love.

Sensing the loss of us
Was slow, sad and silent
The realisation that I was over you
Crept like an ant up my leg
And whistled like the wind through a window
Now, seeing you is like pressing a bruise
Our conversations just a nostalgic echo
As I mourn the loss of my love.

A Cornish sunrise
is spoiled by bleating tourists;
I enjoy the sunrise
with all but my eyes.

As sure as God is sifting out the chaff
and with mathematical certainty...
my listlessness is becoming an issue.
A fist is shaking at me again,
but I’ve stopped looking at faces.

I reach for a book, not to read,
but to straighten my posture,
by opening it in my lap.
I hear sailing boats
always, living here, the constant
boom swing and rattling of cheaply
made metal clips and whipping ropes.
I hear the negligence of novice sailors
and their secret wishes to accidentally
lose their family on the rocks.

I hear the sound of life jackets
hanging on their pegs whilst
skinny kids think that
the sea is just a big blue
bouncy castle.

I have observed how things
can go very wrong;
I was a lifeguard and then coast
guard working for the RNLI.

Now I try and enjoy the sunrise each
morning but the noisiest of tourists are
walking around in groups of
foghorn and sheep’s wool
and warning us of nothing
— so loudly.

They’ve closed the lighthouse
and the docks, ship don’t
come here anymore.

Just these novice sailors
who, with unerring instinct,
sink for the weight of their
masculinity
or lose a crew member
or be pinched painfully by a crab.
Their kids ask: How do boats float?
They ask that as their life jackets
swing on the peg

— the seas are not calm today.

There is a strangeness in fog
that is palpable
and perhaps it is the strangeness in me
which responds

It is no accident I know
that I was raised
where fog is legend
and so remains
a cloying fact of life
for coastal Sunny California
is coldly blanketed each morning
six months of every year
in chilly dampness

What once was familiar
now changed
hidden within soft billows
of clouds brought to earth
the monotonous drip
from the leaves of the trees
the eaves of the roof
the rocks on the hillsides . . .
stars and planets obscured
only the mysterious moon
peeks through the diaphanous veil
lighting her shroud from above

now moving
now shifting
a glimpse of . . . something
caught
only to disappear once more
deep within the flowing haze

Yet where others find in fog
a thing to fear
I find in it a pleasure
seldom found elsewhere
for me familiar comfort
in the heavy grey mist
enveloping me
as a blanket of spirit
or ancestors

And perhaps it is this
the others fear
for the spirits of fog
can be cunning and cruel
hiding dangers
from those unwary
or disrespectful

But I miss the fog
laying low upon the cliffs
turning ordinary landscape
into otherworldly and strange

I long for the lonely cries
of the foghorn at sea
and should the sea monster come
I pray it finds
the love it seeks

Cori MacNaughton
19Jan2007

I call it the Changeover;
like an analogue radio searching for a signal
sometimes it's clear
sometimes it's static
sometimes it's in between
somewhere between far away and near
somewhere lost in the middle
between Signal and Static.

Clear Day the signal reaches out its arms as far as the eye can see
and the ears can hear
and the senses can feel
and taste buds pop and linger
and revel in new experience
and comfort in knowing
and wrapped in wonderment.

Changeover Day is somewhere between Clear Day and Nowhere
struggling to tune in
backwards or forwards
or sideways or upwards
to something
to anything that resembles a signal
like hearing voices in another room
an argument through a wall
the indecipherable murmur of music
the clamber of ushered noise
the mishmash and cacophony
like a symphony of Morse code.

Static Day is dark day
there is no signal
no senses
no sound
only indeterminate fuzz
and the crackle of broken glass
and the foghorn
and the white noise
the confusion and delusion
the paranoia of shifting jigsaws
changing pieces that never fit together
can almost make out a face through the frosted glass
the smear like bird **** on a window
halfheartedly wiped with lackadaisical whimsy
and greasy chip shop newspaper.

In the Static there is no wind
no heart to beat
no empathy or sympathy
just
cold
hard
steel
out of place in a room of feathers and feeling.

You just have to ride out the storm
tell yourself:
it'll be calm soon
it'll be calm soon
it'll be calm soon

The Changeover
from Static to Signal
and the welcome return of voices
and breathing
and beating
and feeling.

It was ten years ago today
That his wife died. He was going to retire
But the Lighthouse needed his care.

There was a ghost in the basement
Or was it just a trick of the light.
If it was, it  just wasn't fair.

The deepness of the foghorn's call
Kept him from missing one single soul.
When someone stopped to visit he'd just sit and stare.

Many people came to ask him to leave
But he just held tight.
To leave would be more than he could bear.

It was ten years ago today
That his wife died. He was going to retire
But the Lighthouse needed his care.

One thing that he never knew
Was that he was the ghost in the basement.
He was the ghost that was sitting in the chair.