#shipwrecks
The sea crashed on the shoreline
Like the whisper of a lover
Telling the secrets of her deepest being
To the deaf and silent land
The waves rushed in and hardened the shore
And no one dared to touch the sea
But fixed angry glares on her murderous swells
Relinquished only with grudging
With the cold grey morning
Heaving on her stormy *******
Men and birds alike find a living
In the cold cruel mistress's hands
The sea like a field, yields its fruit
Mere morsels to keep her lovers enslaved
Bound in sluggish wedlock
Tempestuous, cold
The men made hardy by her rage
And drunk by her salty kiss
Hearing her call when at night in their beds
Or by the fire, they take stock and rest
For what the sea gives, she demands a return
And for another lost lover, a candle shall burn
Oct 2, 2017
Oct 2, 2017 at 9:48 AM UTC
‘OLD AGE is a SHIPWRECK’
Charles de Gaulle
Some boats sink themselves slightly in order to
sleep—they awake with grog hangovers, leaning against
rocks, tillers askew as sea is softened by golden dawn.
The boom swung, tipsily; when the drowsy sail
was hoisted it groaned: auxiliary! Poking its prow
through the greybeards, the cutter then gathered pace,
parting plungers and apologetic waves as it cast off,
taking leave of the harbour in a cloud of spindrift.
The sail was slumped dizzily on the once-strong
shoulders of the mast—it sighs for its sorry spar and
state, remembering arduous journeys on seas of glass,
but no one dares say how conifer bark rains down in
flakes when it sleeps. The signal lamp, once brilliantly
bright, fraternising with the stars each night, is now
outshone by the eyes of abyssal creatures; see it
wrapped up in a pea jacket, perched on the yardarm.
On the weatherdeck mop and bucket are talking
scuttlebutt and canonising shipwreckless legends of the
past—when the laughter stops, and the deployment of
nets, perhaps they stop to think why, and sloppy work
and holystone and, sky…
Kittee-wa-aaake, kitte-wa-aaake—looking for a
school of fish whilst, in their numbers, orbiting the
vessel in an ellipsis; suspicious eyes on our walty
cutter and its measly midday catch. Tragic wrecks of
birds and ships alike, who is to say—to draw the lines
and make divisions of sea and bird and wood? Birds in
their collective strength move like waves, how they
could carry ships! This one is anchored fast, riding it
out as if a storm. But this collective strength, these
birds with villainous intent nip at the weather-worn
fishing nets and lines and a few ***** are lifted. The
barnacles sleep, nightmare visions of keelhauling—who
knew they had such wounds to heal?—forgotten
underneath in the darkness, they are plucked from their
shells by beaks regardless.
Back at the harbour the boat and its weary flanks and
planks and parts and hollow and hull are comfortably
submerged and sleep. The sun is sinking too it seems,
melting on the tongue of the sea. The broken-backed
vessel, dead doors shut, sail folded, mast
unencumbered. The signal lamp, intimidated and
outnumbered by the many who are brighter in the sky
with light years in their eyes, it decides to sleep out
and keep check for the night for the crows in their
murders covet nesting spots on board.
Splinters and vibrating minutes and the bitter end,
perturbed by the day of eddies and unseen internal
waves, nipped by the endless Kittiwake, they are
consulting compasses for the correct hour—
but no response, just the obviousness of the moon,
even from fathoms down and not a whisper.
As in every dark night here there is no silence for the
utterance of water and rustling of stars. You can hear
Sargasso **** dreaming, after hundreds of years afloat
without making root, dreaming of something better or
at last nothing at all. And in every creak of wood there
is a year of bad weather. And within the strength of
every bird is an empty stomach and a restlessness of
wings. In every decomposing fishing net there’s an
echo of vengeance, heard beneath the ringing of a bell
on the harbour. And in every compass there is a needle
tirelessly at work, endlessly referring to the stars—
The red-tipped needle in its binnacle tower
—confused it still spins and swirls
and in every skiff, freshly built or sea-worn and sore,
there is always a desire it will never speak of:
to
dive
for
pearls
on the ocean floor.
Jun 14, 2016
Jun 14, 2016 at 10:26 PM UTC
*Deep down below
Beneath the saline waves
There the Ghost Liners lay in rest
Submerged within their rust
The remnants of a forgotten age
Spirit ships adorn the history page
Now claimed by that treacherous flood
The Liners lay intertwined with the mud
The souls they carried were ferried long ago
The shell of the ship remains
Ripped asunder and buried deep
Somewhere off the abyssal plains
Betrayed by the very path they tread
No trace left of their honoured dead
Save for "treasures" scattered across the depths
A divers trophy from the past*
Nov 21, 2015
Nov 21, 2015 at 3:59 AM UTC
A Woman of Many Words
I am a Woman of Many Words
I am drawn to all those places
That words congregate:
Libraries and bookstores
Road signs and billboards
Ticket stubs and subtitles
Nametags and license plates
Each one a journey driving inside me
I am a Woman of Many Words
I love the way the shapes feel in my mouth
The skittle taste of syllables
I am drawn to especially long words
With their phonetic entities stretching out like tentacles to reach new corners of pronunciation
Words like
Bibliophile and flippant-irreverence
Evanescent and Insouciance
Mellifluous and Effervescent
Mondegreen and Labyrinthine
Words like
Onomatopoeia and Tintinnabulation
I appreciate their weight on my tongue
The way my hands appreciate the thickness that is a fat book
I am a Woman of Many Words
I am attracted to their multitude
The space their figures take up on a page
The calligraphic punches
Typed up by keys
The carefully constructed
Brush strokes
Spouting
What is sure to be, nonsense
But I do enjoy the sound of nonsense in the morning
I am a Woman of Many Words
I cling to the lettered skyscrapers wherever I can find them
Because the familiar scent of scribbles across parchment is comfort food for me
I find them
On the backs of cereal boxes
And in Popsicle riddles
In fortune cookies
And alphabet soup
From magnets on my fridge
To junk food logos
And I hold on to them for dear life
For fear that silence should find me
And leave me empty
For fear it will take away the music of maracas
Made by words
Dancing the salsa inside me
I am a Woman of Many Words
because Words
Answer my Questions,
Soothe my fears,
and Humor my Whims
They are not always Right
But they are always Constant
They are not always Honest, in fact,
Mostly
They Lie
But ever so often
They tell such a Beautiful Lie
That you wish it were true
They sing from the rocks
offering Escape from
Terrifying,
Suffocating,
Mind numbing Silence
that echoes off my skeleton
I am afraid that silence will hollow out my insides
and leave me abandoned
with nothing between my Bow and Stern
my Forecastle all torn up
I am afraid of the skeleton inside me
So I am a Woman of Many of Words
For fear of silence
And contempt for truth
Because my words are sirens
And my shipwreck is home here
Nov 10, 2015
Nov 10, 2015 at 5:12 PM UTC
Yesterday,
I could have sworn
that I could live out
the rest
of
my
days
in peace;
content
with knowing
that you’d be
able to fulfill
everything
that you ever
wanted in life,
even without me.
Right now,
I’m a wreckage;
another
shipwrecked,
abandoned,
forgotten
remainder
of a love
that
someone just
couldn’t take.
And it kills
me more inside
than I would
ever
dare to admit;
how,
even after
everything
we’ve
been
through,
I still wasn’t enough.
I still wasn’t the person
anyone would choose.
I still wasn’t the person
anyone would fight for.
I still wasn’t the person
who you’d love
and want
to stay with.
May 30, 2015
May 30, 2015 at 11:15 AM UTC
the sky reflects its hopes and dreams upon the oceans, turning it into a deep blue like the color of his eyes.
those hopeful dreams you'll never see, not really, you glaze elsewhere towards endings and beginning flicking through the pages
because middles are full of too much - too much emotion, too much love, and hate and everything in between.
you place the book back on a dusty shelf, but you never really forget it. you try your hardest to pretend your fingertips never brushed against the yellowing pages that would've crumbled if not for the fact that you're the most gentle person I know, soft like snow against dying leaves in the winter, caressing them until spring kisses them back to life.
seasons change but my ocean will always be blue, even when the sun drowns itself in the horizon and bleeds vermilion into the water.
you are brighter than every sunken sunset that caresses the shipwrecks you wish you were abroad some nights and some days; the epitome of warmth, calming like a lake's tranquility but always so distant like the depths of jewels buried long ago sleeping in river beds.
maybe i write about bodies of water too often because i want to drown and have someone to hold me but you're one of the few people that pulls me above the waters surface and onto a boat which floats away from regret to somewhere with more color than simply blue even though simply blue is enough;
blue will always be enough.
it will be enough to fill in the gaps between stars on this endless canvas of existence and never mind the paint stains on my hands, they're just another reminder that your existence touched mine,
and despite everything, and no matter what, i will never attempt to wash them off in those blue oceans we are all drifting away in.
my words begin to run dry as the paint on my body.
even in silence, nothing feels like it's about to end, you are the cusp of existence and you're taking me with you off into a horizon of better days;
but anything where you exist will always be what people call 'better days'.
May 26, 2015
May 26, 2015 at 7:18 AM UTC