"atolls" poems
PART I: ADRIFT
Madness passed Misery
and bumped into me.
We travel together now,
Islands lost at sea.
Ahead, Tomorrow rides,
pinned to the sunrise.
Yesterday dogs us,
marking our tides.
Empty atolls pass
on windborne paths.
Now homes to only bones;
more dead outcasts.
The Ocean never laments
or attempts to make sense.
We just wander across it
until living relents.
PART II: VAGRANT
Lagoon to lagoon,
harboring my tether.
Giving me shelter
from daily storms.
Lost in the masts,
a paper boat.
Taking on water...
as expected.
A lucky hook
snares the soggy craft.
Dried and opened:
a cry for .
When no reply came,
a folded flotilla
Whitened the water,
a cry now screaming.
This harbor now empties.
My travels resume.
PART III: DREAM
The sea fades to gulls, and then,
a delta rushed with mountainfulls.
I've become a salmon fighting upstream,
an island lost in a riverbed dream.
Aug 26, 2015
Aug 26, 2015 at 11:30 AM UTC
Ben Sanders sat in his final days
By his cottage, up on the bluff,
He’d spent his life as a rover, and
He said, ‘I can’t get enough!
The sea, the sea, the lure of the sea,
It whispers at my front door,
And calls to me, here up on the bluff,
‘Come down, come down to the shore!’’
‘But I can’t go down and I won’t go down
For I daren’t go down, you see,
Not since I was caught in the maelstrom
When the seabed beckoned to me,
My mate had clung to the mast, while I
Had lashed myself to the rail,
And he went down to the stony ground
Along with the yards and sail.’
‘I hear the sound in my ears still
The roar of the whirling pool,
I’d cried, ‘Let go of the iron chest,
But he’d not let go, the fool.
It was filled with gold and pieces of eight,
Dubloons and precious stones,
It carried him down to an awful fate
Is spread, all over his bones.’
‘But I clung on ‘til the turn of the tide
I could almost touch the ground,
My head was spinning, deep in the pool
As the ship whirled round and round,
But then the tide began to subside
And I said goodbye to Bjork,
For then the ship rose up to the lip
And popped right up like a cork.’
‘We’d sailed forever the Spanish Main
The ship, Bjork and me,
And searched the atolls of rocks and sand
Of the Caribbean sea,
We found the treasure that Blackbeard hid
In a shaft, six fathoms deep,
Then Bjork had pined for Norwegian lands,
Said, ‘What we’ve got, we’ll keep!’
‘The further north that we sailed, the sea
Grew surly in its ride,
The waves crashed over the foredeck and
They tossed us, side to side,
The squalls came in and the rain came down
And we had to reef the sail,
The water rose in the bilge, until
I thought we’d have to bail.’
‘But then one night it was flat and calm
And the water lapped below,
I heard the voice of a siren then
That whispered, sweet and low:
‘Come down,’ she said, ‘you can rest your head
And give up your earthly seat,
But lie instead on a seaweed bed
With a mermaid at your feet.’’
‘I think of Bjork on the ocean bed
Though I don’t know where he lies,
His bones are covered with precious stones
With two dubloons for his eyes,
I’ve never been back to the sea since then
For I fear it, more and more,
As still it whispers on moonlit nights
‘Come down, come down to the shore!’’
Ben Sanders sat in his final days
By his cottage, facing the sea,
He seemed remote, but a final note
That he wrote was left for me.
‘My days of watching the sea are done,
I think that I’ve had enough!’
And then he strode as the tide arose
And walked, right over the bluff.
David Lewis Paget
(Inspired by E. A. Poe’s ‘A Descent into the Maelstrom).
Sep 25, 2013
Sep 25, 2013 at 9:36 AM UTC
Across the water he skates with feet of clay. Frigid eels in his veins, they slither under his skin. His blood is volcanic ice. His forehead is an avalanche. His eyes are frozen atolls. His soul is made of liquid nitrogen. Dancing, he's the creature 10000 Leagues Under the Sea. At rest the iceberg that wrecked the Titanic. Don't come near him ladies. He comes off as a nice little cuttlefish. But he will lash out with his whip pads, ****** you into his ***** beak, and glomb on with every sucker he owns.
He's a real masher, the Disco Slasher, Mr Goodbar X 10. Comes off as a "Nice Guy".
Comes off as a "Friend". But watch out for his Frozen tentacles. They will be your END.
SoulSurvivor
(c) 3/10/2016
Mar 11, 2016
Mar 11, 2016 at 2:01 AM UTC
When cold hits the desert,
I'll go to Kwajalein.
I'll go to Kwaj.
I'll go in a Micronesian jet,
and I'll ride a rusted bike.
I'll go to Kwaj,
and the bougainvillea will sing.
Oh the blue eyed lagoon
at Emmon beach.
I'll go to Kwaj.
And the palm trees will bow to the wind.
Barbecue air.
Plumaria and Parties.
Turtles in the pit
and milk truck shuttles.
I'll go to Kwaj
like I always said I would.
Crescent island and
windside waves.
Bicycle rush hour.
Coral sand and coral reefs.
I'll go to Kwaj.
Oct 9, 2016
Oct 9, 2016 at 1:27 AM UTC
I'm ecumenical
in dreams
where they
made things
ring their
atolls so
habitual souls
made self-government
clean their
lavish results
on electorate
and made
things iron
clad their
best choice
sequence again
Nov 3, 2018
Nov 3, 2018 at 10:47 AM UTC
I've forgotten
What it means
You across the void
Slumbering beneath
Your eternal ocean
I hear your siren song
Set sails and follow sunsets
Over the vast liquid expanse
Rocks jut out and become my anchor
Driftwood and I drift away
I pass islands but they're not mine
They're yours, fortresses of solitude
Each one a dot, a speck, atolls in infinity
Your loneliness spread and fragmented
Incarnations of your personality
One by one fading from view
Fading into obscurity
A mirage to the eye as if thats all you ever were
What's yours or mine is gone
We own the same mind yet live alone
Our hearts turned to the storm
Finding peace with our hells as it crashes into our bones
We drift apart alone
And I've forgotten what that means
Apr 6, 2016
Apr 6, 2016 at 12:15 PM UTC
The sun and its veil drags along the humdrum path, like an old dog’s broken tooth, lodging itself into a decrepit chair. Right up its **** where it belongs and longs to be loved. It suffocates, coagulates, and discombobulates the bowery citizens within the pearl atolls. By the rims of the gates, Moses receives ******** while a sojourning sheik blasts the radio. Meanwhile, the teats of Atlas are duly pounded as the mortals are aroused and grounded. Never beholden to ecumenist beauty, life lives on, defying questions. It festoons its lexicon of self-defeat and the synonyms that we waste sun on; A halcyon is redacted before long. I am left at the teeth of a sycophant and a broad-shouldered man who I adore in dangerous elan. Epigrams foist themselves upon the masts, the masts that sail us o’er the soot of the ocean, and land us flippantly onto the crystalline concentration line which is a-gaping wide.
The orifice of a primordial awaits us.
Oct 25, 2018
Oct 25, 2018 at 9:51 PM UTC