"angler" poems
You've asked me what the lobster is weaving there with
his golden feet?
I reply, the ocean knows this.
You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent
bell? What is it waiting for?
I tell you it is waiting for time, like you.
You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms?
Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know.
You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal,
and I reply by describing
how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies.
You enquire about the kingfisher's feathers,
which tremble in the pure springs of the southern tides?
Or you've found in the cards a new question touching on
the crystal architecture
of the sea anemone, and you'll deal that to me now?
You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean
spines?
The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks?
The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out
in the deep places like a thread in the water?
I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its
jewel boxes
is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure,
and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the
petal
hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light
and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall
from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl.
I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead
of human eyes, dead in those darknesses,
of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longitudes
on the timid globe of an orange.
I walked around as you do, investigating
the endless star,
and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked,
the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.
20.9k
bat-tastic lung
collapse
fragrant raspberry
leaves
gas exchange gone
wrong
little sailor
slivered ocean
reverse gravitational
sinking into
blackened angler doom
new age
humanitarian
loves others
loves discovering
new
truths
loves
plummeting through spaded
blinds
insanely unappreciative
red
the new harvest
the magician blinking
the the sky
imagination finally
makes
sense
Sep 28, 2015
Sep 28, 2015 at 3:20 PM UTC
And gusts a wind that never sleeps
When at the pond arrives a breathless boy,
Knees kneel within the reeds and muck
To glimpse distorted carp beneath.
He counts his boundless hunter's luck
As shiftless as a seaweed wreath,
Then baits the wand that bears his angler's ploy,
And gusts discern he plays for keeps.
This boy roguish
As fish are coy.
And silent in the swaying deeps
The drifting dance of carps who dream and wish
Is ceased by ripples from a splash --
Refractions of the surface shake
As sinks an enigmatic flash:
Allure from realms beyond the lake.
The one that hungers proves the bravest fish,
And silent, at the lure he leaps.
Bravery
Aug 24, 2013
Aug 24, 2013 at 12:00 PM UTC
Liquid clouds sail by
Between green branches they float
Angler’s face is blurred.
Large frog hops then swims
Stirring the placid picture
Grotesque forms reshape.
Stream now calm and still
Sky reflects countryside scene
Tranquil Man and World.
Jan 20, 2012
Jan 20, 2012 at 1:52 AM UTC
Here they Sit
Like the Wizard Behind the Curtain
Hitting a Poetry Writing App
And Hoping for a Strike
True Angler
Throwing out a Line
In Whatever Form
Possible
Aug 15, 2016
Aug 15, 2016 at 6:46 AM UTC
As with everything else in American life, the national government is just another commodity packaged for mass consumption. We're all being spoon fed a spectacular narrative which by its very nature is designed to evoke the passions.
Every day, someone gets on TV and says or does something which provokes outrage, drawing the viewer in like the iridescent lure of an angler fish, and keeping them hooked just long enough for the hypnotic messages of the corporate sponsors to burrow their way into the collective consciousness between "newscasts."
It is precisely for this reason that these frivolous displays SELL like hotcakes. There's no government going on here. There hasn't been for who knows how long? All that is left is BUSINESS. Raw and unfettered. The United States of America is now nothing more than a 'reality' show, and boy, I tells ya, the revenue stream is OH, SO LUCRATIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Feb 7, 2019
Feb 7, 2019 at 12:13 AM UTC
Cancer:
You bathe at night; soak
in the indigo twilight.
Exhausted from the
overload of emotion,
the lunar light cleansed your soul.
Leo:
Charming and cunning,
like the lion, you stalk your
prey. Find the weakness
and exploit it; start the fire,
and then claim your innocence.
Scorpio:
You are the end and
beginning of the cycle.
Reincarnation;
Take the heat, and rise from the
ashes in your final form.
Aquarius:
Water bearer, you
bring life to this alien
landscape. Barren and
undiscovered, this is your
chance to change the world. Long live
your work of innovation.
Virgo:
Tree branch rib cage and
ivy veins that nurture your
winter-bitten soul.
Precious sunlight has returned;
your garden will bloom again.
Aries:
The war going on
inside your brain is growing
tiresome. Your strength
is that of the ram, but you
can't always be the hero.
Pisces:
Submersion. Scared and
eye-level with the Angler.
Take pleasure in the
aesthetic. Perhaps a change
of perspective was needed.
Sagittarius (Father Jupiter Would Be So Proud):
Goddess of the hunt,
your need for adventure and
fearless heart combines
and incarnates the wander-
lust warrior that you are.
Capricorn:
Eyes like a doe; she
is wise, nurturing, and vast.
Motherly strength is
the coat worn over bared bones
and bruised knees. She's her own crutch.
Libra:
Neither side of your
scale may touch the ground.
Chaos may welcome
you with open arms, but she
will grow cold and deranged, love.
Taurus:
Though you are stubborn,
your heart is made of feather,
you fierce, burly ox.
Romantic and devoted,
the darkness in you is gold.
Gemini (The Twin Flame):
How exciting and
infuriating it must
be to look in the
mirror to face your best friend
and your greatest enemy.
Feb 12, 2018
Feb 12, 2018 at 8:10 PM UTC
Love mourner
Angst angler
Thesaurus eyer
Rip-rapper
Suet idler
Dream creamer
Cascade scribbler
Intro-pee-er
Guts gusher
Endorphinater
Sonnet snoozer
Trochee tripper
Iambic lamer
Spondee sniveler
Whisper whipper
Music quencher
Apt-less adjectiver
Yeast yearner
Simile stitcher
Metaphor monger
Exclaimationizer!
Nov 1, 2010
Nov 1, 2010 at 7:58 PM UTC
The cows graze in their pasture
Subservient to their master
Who doesn’t move faster
To help avoid disaster
So the cows are on their own
To deal with snow
Those all alone
Completely froze
Yet those who know
To use the warm glow
Of company that showed
Survive temperature lows
The cows used to solitary grazing
Now begin embracing
To fight cold air they’re facing
That is life erasing
While frost is lacing
The grass once worth tasting
The winter refuses to yield
As snow builds in the fields
The cows’ cohesion is revealed
As they protect their veal
And forget to steal
To connect and heal
During this ordeal
In times of inclement weather
The cows huddle together
Like someone pulled a lever
That won’t stay locked forever
So eventually ties are severed
As summer comes
The dumber numb
Thinking they won
Soaking up sun
Knowing winter is done
They divide into ones
A flow line
Of the bovine
Slow grind
Shows flies
Grow wise
With no size
They devise
To go for eyes
Cows go blind
In their mind
And cannot find
Their herd in time
Pretty soon the irritating fleas
Give them mad cow disease
As they don’t look to please
But put the good on their knees
While they’re hiding in trees
And biting with absolute ease
Seeing the absence of immunities
From their lack of community
The lost independent
Weather defendants
Become repentant
When they hear encroaching
Thunder clouds approaching
The cows become hectic
From a storm electric
Their formation eclectic
So they feel unprotected
But a fence was erected
So they can’t join the dejected
And this lonely life they elected
Is sadly reflected
The lasso angler
Hassling wranglers
Unmasked as stranglers
Bring the herd together
As they pull a lever
That’ll stay locked forever
As the cows’ heads are severed
And the horns in their head
Stick around once they’re dead
As we eat what they were fed
While they made their own bed
Nov 16, 2018
Nov 16, 2018 at 6:18 PM UTC
Log floating in the green stream:
jetting away in the flow,
now I'll stop in the thicket,
uncovering the cricket-song
trapped in the reed-locks.
Splash! that's a tadpole miss;
The trouts, they are laughing.
Gone! that's an angler's bait in vain.
Cranes have got their picking.
There's a hundred suns around.
This is a bubbly babbly morning.
Onward forward I flow, reed in tow.
Nov 22, 2014
Nov 22, 2014 at 8:30 PM UTC
There is a cat at my window
I am still
ragdoll in its flooded mouth
arsonist in one sulfur eye
night in a silhouette
shadow without philosophy
syllable of jungle chill
be it alms seeker
spy
or courier
or smoke as a pirouette
all icicle and satin
black iris I see
blood beating its binary
pulsating lodestone
hanging from its ley line
like the lamp of an angler
when the sun is furthermost
and all gods are unbeknown
I am still
still
the cat sits at my window sill
Dec 15, 2011
Dec 15, 2011 at 4:58 PM UTC
Stung by an angling fad
He took a fishing rod
And sallied onto the nearby stream
That leaped down a rocky shelf
Forming small cascades
But running down into plain ground
With a placid demure face
Uttering soft murmurs sweet
Aiming at the darting Trout
That made the still waters into spiraling whirls
He swished the rod in the air
With the alacrity of a practiced bowler
Looking at the line sinking low
He waited for the fish to nibble at the bait
Meanwhile, inhaling the salubrious air
And watching the limpid movement of the stream
As the hook line went taut in his grip
Hopefully he pulled it up
But alas! With no ***** to boast!
Patiently sat he there for hours
Like a sculptured God upon a rock
Oh! It requires immense patience
With adroitness to boot
To be an angler, no doubt
That sure is a sedate man’s pursuit!
Angling rarely fetches any major luck
Except now and then a fresh fish upon one’s plate
Yet following one’s heart’s pursuit
Is worth more than all tangible reward it brings!
Jun 8, 2016
Jun 8, 2016 at 12:14 PM UTC
I didn't need a lure
Not even a hook
Bait didn't pay a role
No net, no knots, no pole
You simply walked into my life
You threw your arms around me
A squeeze ever so tight
Tight enough to free the unlit cigarette
from my jaw
It sailed softly to the ground
As if to say
"You won't need me anymore, that girl is here to stay"
And sure enough you did proclaim
I've never been much of a fisherman
but somehow I still caught you
Oct 8, 2017
Oct 8, 2017 at 11:46 PM UTC
People in the sand
The tide, it heals the fresh scars
And leaves their salvage.
Hard the seagull flew
Gale working against her strife
No, she does not move.
Hoary lines appear
The angler of Creevy Pier
Battling the sea.
Dec 18, 2012
Dec 18, 2012 at 10:20 PM UTC
The memory of her sits on a balcony ledge, cigarette in hand.
My green light at the end of a dock.
And this time I am reaching out
like many before,
in pages and poems past.
Macbeth’s face is a book.
Her body is an atlas
tracing a beautiful continent.
Follow the long tributaries that lead to shallow deltas.
This shore begins softly and forms into slender feet,
quiet but powerful when outstretched an angler waiting for prey.
Odysseus, only, can hear this Siren play.
Follow her legs, those tawny plains,
unbroken, guiding along welcomingly,
inviting curiosity and conscripting imagination.
An oasis.
And her torso is a valley from which
her laughter is ****** upward and resisted until uncontainable.
Dimples break and burst like earthquakes.
A ridgeline is all that awaits until we see her face.
She is the Americas from bottom to top.
Follow her decorated canyon mouth
but know it is merely a diversion.
Her eyes are icebergs, which shyly reveal themselves
to sink ships and drown lovers, for always.
Her hair is aurora borealis,
the northern lights,
dancing colorfully
to an unaccompanied waltz
heard by everyone but her.
As the memory of her sits the smoke billows around
like clouds traveling down a coastline
only to dissipate
and disappear.
Jul 31, 2013
Jul 31, 2013 at 3:23 PM UTC
Gotta love fishermen, I guess,
They all belong to Anglers' Anonymous,
Dodging Waterways Rangers,
Are the fish ever in danger?
After the football, they go fishing,
For big catches they are all wishing,
We listen to all those fish tales,
The ones that never got to the scales,
The whoppers that got away, yah!
I barrack for the fish these days,
Gotta love fishermen, I guess,
They belong to Anglers' Anonymous!!
Sep 11, 2016
Sep 11, 2016 at 7:29 PM UTC
when that strange man in the park
asked me if love could cause physical pain
i told him that i fell in love with a smile
once
a smile that lassoed and squeezed my heart and lungs
until they were one boiling *****
a smile that buried into my back
pulled out the pink shy parts
i paid an expert to destroy
pink devils
i cried into my cousins shoulder on autumn benches
pink tears
i fell madly pinkly in love with a smile
plucked like a fish from dark winter water
admired
looked after
worthy of inspection
smiling breath on my scales and back
where the pink between them is apparent
then hurled back into winter water
where the day discharges slowly over the grass
in the courtyard.
i told that strange man in the park
my pink insides fizzle-pop like meat on
the summer sidewalk
when i imagine the smiling angler
making that next pull
admiring and smiling
cradling the back like a
pink chalice
That one thinks it's first catch.
As did I. Dark lip burn marks
On the pink.
Physical Pain.
Feb 17, 2013
Feb 17, 2013 at 3:32 AM UTC
I think that you and I have always met.
Wherever there's a world big enough for two people to get lost.
And wherever the lost lay their heads down too low to see.
Right when we both get tired of the pain filling the lamps in our eyes.
But right before the bags start blowing in the wind
or the dust dances in the corners,
Or the blade hits bone.
I think that I always hear you first.
And your voice is a bagpipe war cry.
And the hand on the top of my head is removed all at once.
And I break the plane of the ice water fast.
And as we rise we lock eyes.
And we smile.
And our smiles explode open to syphon as much life as we can inside.
And we pour our pain into each others lamps.
And our lips will light the wicks.
And we dive back down.
And this time we choose the floor.
The coral bouquets.
The hotbeds.
The shipwrecks.
We are the bright lights moving in the dark now.
We are the ones we were afraid of.
And we are not together.
But we don't get lost so easy anymore.
Aug 6, 2016
Aug 6, 2016 at 5:01 PM UTC
...butterflies float on violet caps
fingers stir the hummingbird bath
angler steady under canopy layer ~
the lighthouse sails are bending...
Mar 31, 2017
Mar 31, 2017 at 2:00 PM UTC
i had to discard, but that brought the butterflies and the angler-fish.
it kept the genies and the shrink-wrap in stainless-steel steel traps... in the permanent traps.
we drag our baskets haphazard. beneath the undulation of the Under.
below the Was.
i slept on thin gems and dust mites.
i built a clock from the errant gears of your heart and charmed nowhere out of harm's way on time.
i bought you a Man O' War jellyfish and stone kisses from a derelict wish.
we gag the drastic Mamet, till we Stoppard.
Just Because.
May 17, 2013
May 17, 2013 at 1:23 AM UTC
you'll live in
her hippocampus, for now,
but when it's done with you, you'll be exiled into
dark, slower, parts of her brain (where the angler fish live),
you'll learn to keep silent just so you can survive,
don't try to swim to the surface, you'll just be pushed back down
The Light Doesn't Want You.
You may feel a disturbance in the waters, a rogue ray of sun, perhaps,
maybe an oil spill
But This Isn't An Invitation.
The Light Doesn't Want You.
You live here now because the pre-frontal cortex didn't want you,
you were too expensive to keep around.
Do You Know How Much It Costs To Set Off the Sprinklers?
we don't need to wash away your messes anymore.
So you'll live Here,
your movements will stir the plasma only slightly, and yes it'll affect the Ether but /shrugs,
it'll do.
Don't make a sound.
Sep 23, 2013
Sep 23, 2013 at 9:43 PM UTC
an ocean feather snuffs it in an alcove, to my leftjust another pair of lungs to expand and swill the seaand i wave curtly to the ***** on the next corner(nothing to see nothing to see) kindlingher shoulders against the lamp-post shelooks more like an angler than a good timeand paint by number peeling swips, lightning strikesupon her hips and the smoke machine pumps nicotinethrough out my veins, on the verge of somethingepicglitter lines the gutter with a sunless pulse all its ownand concrete currents sweep the ground beneath my feetas i exit the aphotic zone:ale stained blouses and hardened nipplesmake my artist type jealous beneath the soft neonsof the brickyard pizza sign the whirlpool opens with asureness of free beer to soften my mindand i've done this enough for the anxiety to subsideso i kick off these shoes and iDIVEinto a plethora of flannel jacketsand guys named 'steve'
Feb 23, 2010
Feb 23, 2010 at 7:26 AM UTC
By my own contrivance (or not)
Cloaked in some distant shroud obscure
There was a little fire (I thought)
Floating, phantom angler's lure
Will-o'-the-wisp on brittle ice
Beguiling in its sinuous prance
Waiting for lost souls to entice
With symphonies of fervent dance
With final breaths it doth abscond
An elemental Charon, gone
To the bottom of its frozen pond
And endless sleep without a yawn
Breathlessness of ebullient flight
Effervescent, long out of sight
Sep 9, 2015
Sep 9, 2015 at 11:06 AM UTC