#gulls
The light is gloomy,
the gulls are squawking to me --
that rain is coming.
Aug 4, 2025
Aug 4, 2025 at 3:10 AM UTC
lunch break fire escape
seagulls hover far below
rattled by stern winds
thoughts battle their own nature
no progress in their flight
.
Mar 28, 2025
Mar 28, 2025 at 11:14 AM UTC
berating the fish for breeze / randy on the shore
a casualty of the seaside seas
they preach until they bore ;
the gulls and their crustaceans / tide and tale
but no end of their frustrations
light up the slick of oil
and bathe the night
maddened with acceleration
Jul 17, 2025
Jul 17, 2025 at 1:20 PM UTC
I went down to watch the ocean this morning - well, Long Island Sound anyway. My last chance for a while, classes start tomorrow. I wonder sometimes how I can be refreshed by that gray, drizzly, melancholy harbor - locked in winter’s intemperate grip - but I am.
The salty air seems thicker and richer, the sky bigger and wilder. There’s the relaxing sound mix of wave and gull. The ugly brown pelicans bickering like old, married couples, as a lone fisherman, in his yellow macintosh slicker, sorts his boat lines under the watchful, hopeful, hungry eyes of floating black-backed gulls.
Maybe I should become a sailor? Besides, I hear it’s a great way to meet guys.
Jan 24, 2022
Jan 24, 2022 at 10:51 AM UTC
Dylan Thomas went wearily, windily to the sea,
Where dogs ran and tongues wagged saltily,
Sea battered boats sang shanties to the bearded shore,
As the sea legged gulls barked and cried hungrily
The shadowy sun surrendered to a once bitten moon,
And the sand stood still by the windy wet dune
Nov 28, 2020
Nov 28, 2020 at 12:57 AM UTC
** why do the white gulls call? (everyday must have its poem)**
<>
the cries are intelligible,
each a separate story of:
patient waiting, of seas
unending waving, unchanging,
cycling, waiting, prophesying,
propelling history, retaining a
staining past, future similar...
why do the white gulls call?
for evening tide rapid approaching,
we may even have a decent sunset,
first worthy of being drunk toasted,
all reminders that this ordinary Monday,
has nearly escaped without an extraordinary
composition, you prone position negates
inspiration, so rouse yourself, rise taller
tribute due, tribute demanded, tribute needed,
that is why the gulls screech, fearful of lapse,
that poet will suppress what is compelled, no,
compulsed! the senescent days offer no excuse,
indeed, the time of limitation is nigh, is here,
the gulls know their history human, its lore,
needs foretelling, retelling, and keeping
humans come and go, but gull generations require
the prescient precision of their words, to define,
to record each day’s unique way of living/dying,
so they can become forebears of the future,
the passers down, of that they cannot exclaim well,
we humans are their heroes, living close by,
we carry the gulls thanks given, for skilled appreciation
so they cry out, is our poem be readied, for the day’s end
comes closer and* every day must have its poem!
Jun 15, 2020
Jun 15, 2020 at 6:56 PM UTC
gulls squawk angrily on our roof
they argue about survival
forgetting they carry the souls
of drowned mariners
we argue in our bedsit
penned into a miniature life
fighting for identity
the right to be ourselves
we could be by the sea
but those angry squabbling scavengers
have never seen a wave in their lives
just gulls not seagulls
forgetting ourselves
we spar around the furniture
you are southpaw
I am orthodox
they root through *******
scattering it everywhere
no use to man nor beast
disease ridden vermin
wrapped up in life
forgetting how to fly
but we can all soar
if we ride the thermals
Apr 28, 2020
Apr 28, 2020 at 1:50 PM UTC
Massive, gray, these leaden waves
bear their unchanging burden—
the sameness of each day to day
while the wind seems to struggle to say
something half-submerged planks at the mouth of the bay
might nuzzle limp seaweed to understand.
Now collapsing dull waves drain away
from the unenticing land;
shrieking gulls shadow fish through salt spray—
whitish streaks on a fogged silver mirror.
Sizzling lightning impresses its brand.
Unseen fingers scribble something in the wet sand.
Originally published by Southwest Review
Feb 21, 2020
Feb 21, 2020 at 10:53 PM UTC
He walks the end of the pier, alone
No home to go to,
A ghost in ragged clothes
Passing among the crowds,
Unseen and unheard
But he always feeds the gulls,
Their noisy raucous squabbling
Over a few scraps of bread,
Reminds him of how unhappy
All these tourists really are,
Pretending to enjoy their holiday
Kidding themselves they are free.
Sep 17, 2019
Sep 17, 2019 at 6:37 PM UTC
She and me
Kick our legs over the cliff
Watching the water pound in steep
Crests of mist,
Awash the quaking stone.
Drinking through the daze
Withering and coastal
Happy with every day
that drips
And growing older
Sedimentary
Seeking the simple deaths of life.
And when we sang our songs to the flocks of gulls
And they called saline
Eating fishbones
Circling like biplanes
Above the coast
We wondered what wandrous
Raptors out ran the oilpan
And instead became this.
We eat our picnic meats
And settle down for a long daydream
Staring at the overcast blanket
Seeing streaks of Grey dispersed between
Feeling
Warm and a little bit loved by the sea.
Me and she
There was no stopping
Her questions, flying hot lead at my
Brain
Dripping gall juice inside the spleen
Infected and hungry
Waiting to engorge our final meal
A bunch of microscopes in the petri
Dished out and left to drift
Amongst the lapping waves.
Assuredly,
When those gulls flapped their lazy way
Heading down the coast
Searching for simple meals
And calling family in the sky
They wondered to god
about solitary
You and I
And just what was our deal?
Aug 5, 2018
Aug 5, 2018 at 4:33 PM UTC
the gulls
flying by
their wings
shrouded in the morning mist
or silhouetted against a bleeding sun
Jul 4, 2018
Jul 4, 2018 at 7:21 PM UTC
the road gathers itself like a drained old woman,
hunched over rags, beneath the gloomy crag,
sintering as it nears the beach,
worn out through time, impoverished
it has become reflective in the chittering half-light.
Eviscerated by the pawing waves,
contradictory cracks like entrails, hanging out
crushed into solitude , it redefines its continuous retreat.
In the reductive shade
it circumvents the cove, its tarmac withered,
a battered host to foreign weeds.
Sunrise chides the posturing sky, the sulking universal remnants
vanishing in the fenestrated glare. In the near distance, air unravels,
the moving storm exhaling slips of cloud
rapidly swarming like furious flecks of phlegm-sneezed out in perpetuity
between heat and cold.
The road lies entombed beneath a scree, tumbledown stones and dust.
Ramblers and cars have sought and found
an alternative route. The moistened rubble creaks
as liquid gathers in its shifting heart, crawling out in rivulets-the rain
descending like spit,
emolliating the countryside, shifting dollops of fetid mud,
enveloping like a furious aneurysm.
Sea and land entrenched in conflict,
a war of attrition always won by seas, unleashing energy
of mindful apocalypse in the manner of a gentle sigh.
The gaping abscess of scarred promontories tottering
like feverish drunks. The mouthed obscenities of carnivorous
birds radiates throughout the cove pinpointing local
drownings encrusted with salt. Sea upon sea impose themselves
enviously on rampant shorelines feasting on sand and rock. Never ending!
Plunging ever forward like a barren plough, receding, only to
re-site its casual fury-implosion upon explosion.
The road in its sullen retreat
stumbles through narrow valleys speckled
with gloom; trees with yellow flowers
blooming in crinkled shadows,
deer leaping through high-standing grass, mincing
between tall thin trees. Loping down
into the cities, it becomes a tousled high street full
of immigrants, all yearning for the sea.
Jul 27, 2017
Jul 27, 2017 at 12:59 PM UTC
An hour might as well be a year,
A life, a night lacking sleep,
Something sweet but just outta reach,
Or song, one line, that one line,
With memories sweeter than ice cream,
And crescendo akin to broken mirrors.
Long gone, would be the “clickety-clack,”
The coming and going of a train;
Meaning to stop, but only to pass you by,
Offering the slightest dust, hints to where
You should have been come ‘morrow;
Left would be an only, lonely to posit –
Why can the gulls go when I can’t?
May 12, 2016
May 12, 2016 at 11:05 PM UTC
She tips the toppling tide,
lavish underbelly of an albatross,
and how she rides.
Each wave washing
its imposing self to shore,
more, glorious more,
this gasping February seashore.
Tufts of feathers flutter
and dune grasses dance muster,
must hold ons,
this rallying of the determined.
Grace notes, song of nature swim in.
Melody of gull, harmonious tension
broken.
Her flight brings tears. She is gone.
Will she weather? For now perhaps,
but not long.
Feb 16, 2016
Feb 16, 2016 at 12:58 PM UTC
---
mist
separates
the
fabric
of
sky
and
sea
gulls
stitch
them
together
again
soulsurvivor
(c) 5/24/2015
May 25, 2015
May 25, 2015 at 2:59 AM UTC
Tall round beams standing
in salty water, connecting
fishermen and star-fish gazers
with a moon-shaped bay
on the eastern Pacific.
They stand on land and step into sea,
as rolling barrels from Arctic grounds
tickle their lower legs.
A centipede of wood, this
outward- jutting wharf.
The fishermen sink expectant hooks;
the surfers haul shiny glass
banana-shaped boards of foam;
the weekenders come posing
baby strollers for picture shooting.
Each passing wall of blue
energy slows at reach of
shallow sand, deciding
whether to keep rolling or
transform into a steep stack
of snapping water. On big days
the sea legs shake all the
fishermen. They lock away
their sacrificial bait in rusty boxes
and collapse their fibered rods.
On calm days I step out to a
wooden bench and hang my
face between the rails. Running
people pass below, between the
knotted hips and creosoted thighs.
August buries this preserve
in such drizzle. Gulls go bundling
inside their sleek robes
of white feather, leaning
windward on worn bent knees.
Apr 27, 2015
Apr 27, 2015 at 10:30 PM UTC
Go where I want to go in my head
be who I want be in my head
see who I want to see, be with who
I want to be with, do just what i want
to do in my head.
Oceans to sail across in my head
salt air and seagulls, in my head
new lands to seek out, monsters
that freak out, all in my head.
Space men and rockets in my head
words that annoy me in my head,
fathers and mothers and even
my lovers; all in my head.
Go where I want to go in my head.
Be who I want to be!
Jan 28, 2015
Jan 28, 2015 at 9:26 AM UTC
I dream of the Sea, where the sun lightly shines; and the shores are kissed with the ruddle-and-hush of Sea's salty waves.
Above the flowered dune, the gulls squawk at the boy who is offering them bread.
There's a mischievous grin on his face, as he teases the gulls who swoop to meet his outstretched hands.
And I smile!
Sep 2, 2014
Sep 2, 2014 at 10:24 PM UTC