"barracuda" poems
A country lane, which eats animals, earrings and experiences,
winds in spools around the oat-house and follows the broken wall.
My sister’s bottle green jeep made waves along the hedges,
she shook out her hairband and the conversations of the evening.
An owl asks on all sides, and would seem to answer himself as
the field barracuda, the vast wide eye for the minnow-mouse.
She put a pearl in the bushes, dangling spit-like,
an orb, a moon-berry, full and dead forever.
She drove faster, as the english night slowed down,
down by the where the willow covers the road sign.
She killed a badger,
as if they had both lost something here.
Sun-cooked,
crisp at the curling edges
he’s a dark patch, like a fixed pothole.
his bones tested her michelins in the morning
again, glassy eyed, stillened,
retroflective and blind to the shimmering shadow of flies
rising up through his skin like a spirit.
But both her ears are full.
Jan 10, 2016
Jan 10, 2016 at 3:40 PM UTC
For every single barracuda smile.
Every apple that we didn't bite. All the dull exotic things I never had the chance to say. The way the ocean is louder at night, the glittering bones of the city, the taste of black cherries. For every paper star, and liquid street, suburban summer mattress like a shrine.
For hands like deep-sea divers through your hair.
The unknown red interior of you, the foreign countries of your thoughts. For every back of matchbook message, every finger tracing up my thighs, and for our reckless lips rubbed raw and red. For all the casual knives of conversation, the snow like stained glass underneath the sky.
For illuminated cities half-submerged.
Every exquisite impulse and grass-scented infidelity. For my heart like glass, like coal, like diamond. The salt and starless seas that crave a sailor. For the hand-grenade of lust and the ugly gardens of regret. For your eyes like earthquakes, like cigarettes, like disaster.
For every dark-haired, blue eyed boy.
Mar 22, 2013
Mar 22, 2013 at 10:27 AM UTC
She’s underhand throwing words with her mouth
The boy leans in past natural borders, to study the agenda in her eyes
He is built like a bent paperclip,
with bottlebrush forelocks, a barracuda jaw.
Between her bare legs, she gently squeezes
a cup of iced hibiscus tea.
She reaches down and lifting it to her lips,
I feel mine part, in thirsting sympathy…
Her upper thighs blush wet with condensation as
The boys eager fingers click on her knee,
like ice cubes in her sweating berry hibiscus,
floral melt cascades down her throat.
Fairy breath lands on my shoulders - my silk overcoat
It makes me dissolve with memory
of my beloved tea picker,
a cocoa skinned Sudanese girl
traveling the road to market in Al-Junaynah,
swaying in the truck bed under a warm sun,
dreaming of red karkadeh flowers
and a paper clip boy.
Sep 25, 2014
Sep 25, 2014 at 9:37 AM UTC
A fortified wall is nothing against a surfing barracuda
during a bad dream full of bad intentions:
Wave-action makes you look drunk,
stumbling in the water, lazy as a jellyfish carcass on shore I stare at you.
I am with that girl
the one in the silvery bikini
and wet hair,
fanning on her clumsy shoulders in thin strands.
I'll be with her till the end. I'll make this stand. This stand against the wave coming in.
Turning around in the barrel of a wave,
you wave me in with you;
smiling up to your incisors. How cleanly
you are able to bite off chunks of meat.
The wave womps the **** out of you.
Thunder is under there, thunder
of waves, lightning of jellyfish,
brutalized clams,
hard-pressed sand,
all confused in the barrel of betrayal that is the wave,
while the wave yawns and grins.
Nothing can stand the wave,
I hope you ******* drown in there;
I hope that others just like you,
eat you,
that you become seafood.
Aug 25, 2012
Aug 25, 2012 at 10:10 PM UTC
you are the light at the end of a tendril. a spindle of dread, woven in caustic guile of argyle
parallelograms...phantom realms of solid waste. you are the pin in the subject. gating satan through a thimble
of crocodile tears, the new symbol.
the rude glyph in black bibles and strong drink, en-kindling the dead. rodents ponzi the scheme
of hell’s maze, with lies...your lies...
you have eyes that lead aside from your heart’s plot
you are saboteur. banal.
unrestrained waste. you are the fin in the barracuda puppet, grazing the wrist of Dim Henson
huffing crystal gorillas in the congo of your foyer
you are
the black chandelier.
teach me your cheap trick
striking off ‘ iron-on’ pinkie swears
your praline heresies... your ‘ no remorse’ code
lay bare to me.
better my better angels, to fathom the loathsome ****
of your actual mind. keep me abreast of your wretched games...
apply the rod of your wrong love, above all.... you must betray.
you must know in your fetid rot
of a third eye... the phlegm genius of **** blindness.... teach me the rictus of
cold hearted. a false god in my lotus !
spare me the chaste suzette
flip me the ***** that spits fables.
learn me the savage puns
to pummel you sustaining your worst done.
grant me the lethal beans for my sacred cow
trade me the idylls of your forked heart
for your crushed null
and crossed
bones.
Mar 16, 2013
Mar 16, 2013 at 11:53 PM UTC
Beneath the water lived a nymph, beautiful as
A flower, if you like woman with petals
Growing from out of their face
And lips adorned with myriad metals
Moving silently with infinite grace.
Fishermen who caught her, in alarm
Tossed her back with dismayed cries
Fearful that she would do them harm
When she exposed her fangs, darting from her eyes,
Forked tongues from each palm.
But apart from all that, she was a delightful creature
As proud as a catwalk model
Sexuality impressed into each feature
Death in each cuddle,
Poison injected from each freshly opening suture.
At the sea’s dark bottom lived the nymph
Devouring fish raw, terrifying sharks and barracuda,
Dining on shellfish and prawns for lunch;
Darting amongst Angel Fish and eels, a hungry aficionada,
Tearing into shreds what she could not crunch.
Gentle with her own kind until coition
Was complete, when if hungry she devoured
Her temporary mate without undue consideration,
No please or thank you. Feeling duly empowered
By her actions, as confirmed by her explosive, acrid indigestion.
No longer young, her children dead,
She glides through the water from China to France
A preposterous seaweed hat upon her head
And in several places, impaling her scaly flesh a serrated coral branch.
Her sartorial taste filling even the sharks with fin-quaking dread.
The last of the kind. The others are (literally) toast.
Protected by animal charities here and abroad
She gladly subsists on ambitious swimmers who venture far from the coast
All she can now catch or afford.
A capricious tyrant until the last, when, victim of a fisherman’s boast
She was hoist up like iniquitous cod
Out of the sea, paraded on the deck while she struggled for breath.
Shot at. Abused. Poked and speared with a steel tipped rod,
Dragged into the harbour, pummelled close to death.
Screaming out, as she in unexpected agony died: “I thought, I truly thought, I was god!”
Jul 20, 2016
Jul 20, 2016 at 2:06 PM UTC
You tried to be my lighthouse
(though I never asked you to),
a bright, clean, unwavering beacon
that could guide me through
the most treacherous,
the most turbulent,
the most shark-infested of waters,
and bring my sea-tossed self
safely back to harbour.
How frustrating it must have been for you to watch me
- in spite of your true, benevolent light -
wrecking myself against every rock I could find,
chasing storms,
searching for mines and riptides,
hanging out where the sirens
in their tiny, iridescent-scaled bikinis
ride on barracuda.
Jan 4, 2016
Jan 4, 2016 at 8:56 AM UTC
Do you remember days gone by
When car songs ruled the radio
Think about the passing years
Where did these songs all go?
Little Honda, Duece Coupe
I miss my GTO
I miss the beach boy harmony
Where did the car songs go?
The Little Old Lady From Pasadena
My Hot Rod Lincoln...oh
Daddy took my t-bird away
Where did my car songs go?
Way back in the sixties
The car song, it was boss
Where has the music travelled
It's this generations loss
Do you remember days gone by
When car songs ruled the radio
Think about the passing years
Where did these songs all go?
Little Honda, Duece Coupe
I miss my GTO
I miss the beach boy harmony
Where did the car songs go?
Hot Rods, and dune buggies
The cars would go go go
Where are the car songs hiding
Does anybody know?
I miss my barracuda
My "Woody" was the bomb
There's nothing out there like it
Where has the car song gone?
The music they are playing
Just puts me fast asleep
I need to hear my car song
No more "Rolling In The Deep"
Do you remember days gone by
When car songs ruled the radio
Think about the passing years
Where did these songs all go?
Little Honda, Duece Coupe
I miss my GTO
I miss the beach boy harmony
Where did the car songs go?
Sep 25, 2013
Sep 25, 2013 at 11:46 PM UTC
I tip my hat to Kierkegaard
Who was there when things were hard,
To Mr. Hofstadter
Loading my cannon with fodder,
To Willie Yeats
Who showed me my poetic cognates,
To the Buddha
Who, mentally being a barracuda,
Illuminated what patience really means,
To Graham Greene's
"Brighton Rock"'s influence on Morrissey,
Which made me smile at the sea
And recognize "in my own life
What Robert Browning meant
By an old hunter talking with Gods;
But I am not content."
Jun 24, 2014
Jun 24, 2014 at 1:26 AM UTC
O the mustangs stung like mosquitoes,
fast as lightning & thunderbolts,
liberators & fortresses,
hurricanes & tornadoes,
hell cats & bears,
invaders & dragons,
good grief Lord,
those mighty Gordons!
O wily foxes & quick lancers,
avengers & vindicators,
swordfish, barracuda,
some tuna, albacore.
Gladiators in the gauntlet,
zig-zagging & spitting fire,
spewing molten hot-lead,
bright-tracers in the night,
forever fighting
with their all their might,
bombing their daylights out
and into submission,
la morte, stone dead.
O they sank the Rising Sun,
'cause they had that *****
battling against all wrong
& protecting only
what was right!
Dec 24, 2013
Dec 24, 2013 at 8:50 AM UTC
From the beach my group departs for a deep sea fishing excursion
Huddled in a fiberglass vessel known as the Barracuda
Captain Alberto is a burly man with dark skin and a silver tooth
Operating the motor is his young apprentice and amigo
The captain has his children’s names painted on the hull
One of them, Estrella, rings out in my mind
The boat rocks me nearly nauseous in the bobbing motions
My excitement builds as I photograph a variety of species
Fish would breach the surface, birds would swoop and dive
I even saw a whale
Distinguishable by tail
We slowed down for a better look at century-old tortugas
Circled round a mating pair, voyeurs to procreation
An engine boom and acceleration meant there was a bite
Alberto took the rod yet handed it to my party
The Mahi-Mahi swam and pulled with all its mortal strength
Its yellowish body shining and shimmering while it leapt
Our captain unsheathed an instrument for pulling the fish aboard
A candy cane shaped hook with a fine blade ending the curve
Impaled the marine dweller, pinned his body to the deck
It flopped about violently seeming to spill blood by the gallon
I found the creature’s face to be both hideous and handsome
A long bony bridge protruded from its forehead
Here, Alberto beat the beast to death with a wooden bat
It died with dignity
Fed a family
I thank the sea
For this gift
Jan 8, 2011
Jan 8, 2011 at 6:37 AM UTC
I got the rock tunes
blaring
loudly
down at the
Dairy Queen
& we’re ******** off.
I fell in love
with her banana split,
the whipped cream
& the bushes.
So she jacked me.
And now
I’m infatuated
with fast food desserts
& her fast car.
Barracuda Barracuda.
A 426 hemi.
May 7, 2014
May 7, 2014 at 10:56 PM UTC
To face the fear of being liquid, I go under, float the drift. Leave the boat behind, no worries. I am in no hurry to school with the rest, colorful parrot fish, at home in the depths.
I am not afraid of sharks materializing from the inked abyss. The nothing in their soulless eyes is just black-bottomed assessing - not one of us.
In a lazuli sea, the barracuda cartel tails me, their silver barrels rule the reef, leering grins glinting diamonds, hungry pirates seeking gold hidden in my tender lobes.
Yellow-bellied sea snakes swarm, their sinuously wicked heads disappear and reappear on ebb and crest of every wave, see their split tongues read the chemistry of each exhaled breath.
A swollen catch unsought. Forsworn. What's lost will be reborn. From within, yolk still tethered, resting on the bottom. Net a dying heart, return it to the deep, watch it roll and flutter, remember how to beat.
Mar 21, 2016
Mar 21, 2016 at 11:57 AM UTC
THE NYMPH
Beneath the water lived a nymph, beautiful as
A flower- if you like women with petals
Growing from out of their face
And lips adorned with myriad metals
Moving silently with infinite grace.
Fishermen who caught her, in alarm
Tossed her back with dismayed cries
Fearful that she would do them harm
When she exposed her fangs, darting from her eyes,
Forked tongues from each palm.
But apart from all that, she was a delightful creature
As proud as a catwalk model
Sexuality impressed into each feature
Death in each cuddle,
Poison injected from each freshly opened suture.
At the sea’s dark bottom lived the nymph
Devouring fish raw, terrifying sharks and barracuda,
Dining on shellfish and prawns for lunch;
Darting amongst Angel Fish and eels, a hungry aficionada,
Tearing into shreds what she could not crunch.
Gentle with her own kind until coition
Was complete, when if hungry she devoured
Her temporary mate without undue consideration-
No please or thank you. Feeling duly empowered
By her actions, as confirmed by her thunderously satisfied indigestion.
No longer young, her children dead,
She glides through the water from China to France
A preposterous seaweed hat upon her head
And criss-crossing her piebald nose a serrated coral branch.
Her sartorial taste filling even the sharks with fin-quaking dread.
The last of her kind. The others are (literally) toast.
Protected by animal charities here and abroad
She gladly subsists on ambitious swimmers who venture far from the coast-
All she can now catch or afford.
A capricious tyrant until the last, when, victim of a fisherman’s boast
She was hoist up like iniquitous cod
Out of the sea, paraded on the deck while she struggled for breath.
Shot at. Abused. Poked and speared with a steel tipped rod,
Dragged into the harbour, pummelled close to death.
Screaming out, as in unexpected agony she died: “I thought, I thought, I was god!”
Jul 3, 2017
Jul 3, 2017 at 7:38 PM UTC
Four life-size lipsticks jive, they
groove in tune with costumed comrades:
the monstrous tapeworm, unfitting for even
a family of whales, head held high like
homemade dragons on Chinese New Year, or
the bald man decked out in navy felt, garb
saturated with plastic spoons he
needs to get laid.
But the lipsticks in their red, red heels, with
human eyeholes hidden behind fabric, which
shows the blend of castor & chemicals, what hue:
dark crimson or barracuda berry?
They wear but a fraction of the common ingredients
used for dressing up,
makeup as the encore.
It stains the lips,
the coffee rims around the country,
the chests of restricted lovers.
Let us celebrate the metaphor of makeup
on this festus day--where it’s excusable to act out
the fantasies of being not
ourselves.
Dec 25, 2013
Dec 25, 2013 at 6:35 PM UTC
A fire blazes beneath the waves.
That bright light, that once blinded,
gets dimmer as it slowly drowns
in the distant depths of yesterdays.
A squid and a whale motion ignorantly,
escorting the diminishing light down.
A school of barracuda look on obliviously.
Echoes of silence reply from the dark depths.
It begins on the Moon, bright and blue,
the ground has Spring and the light is new.
Until it comes crashing, splashing some brine,
sinking down to the bottomless heart of the ocean?
Jul 11, 2013
Jul 11, 2013 at 2:10 PM UTC
a pendulum swings too wide and clicks vicious out of time
low brooding in a sealed place that parochial visitors never find
beautiful burden of oval things in an old, worn basket
tartan rectangles neatly capped in your salvation drink
empty nest on a cool, summer's day offers some relief
four sets of foliage gives nice tunes for the little princess
ice chips clink hearty like ships in the dream tumbler
a friend revered turns fiend when eyes burn on horrid tiles
a plate cracks in down slide and ossified barracuda get split
a spooky reminder gets played slowly on a vintage turntable
once fine songs given for free to unwieldy strokes
round and round on the turning thing
and just like that, off you go, like a seal
on your flippers
away from here
Dec 11, 2013
Dec 11, 2013 at 11:06 AM UTC
Generation X , sold out by a New World Order , fathers lost their pension to Reganomics , Baby Boomers took 911 , shot holes in the Constitution , killing proletariat , old as the strata on the canyon walls , welcome to the Holocene Epoch and ***** deals , wasted lives and politics that **** ! Change is the same barracuda caught all over again , don't defend your castle with my final drop of blood while your singing America the Beautiful on the Washington Mall , put out your hand , try to break my fall , with eyes shut , typing in coordinates on a 'Smart Bomb', or flying a drone over the castle wall !
Sep 28, 2015
Sep 28, 2015 at 2:04 PM UTC
Magic memories, Sweet, of you
Who swam with me in oceans, blue.
Swam in deep green grottos warm
Where minnows, brightly painted, swarmed.
We plunged down, deep, to coral beds
To sway with tidal seaweed, red
And conger eels’ ferocious teethed
Now bared… then recoiled back to reef.
Squads of barracuda dashed
Around us, close, in silver flash,
Threatening with long gnashing teeth
Invoking stone cold fear, bequeathed.
Yet hovering, in deep crystal clear
Enraptured and entranced, endeared,
As giant kelp in columns, swayed
And stingrays in battalions, played.
Long grey shark then menaced bye
Ogling us with plate sized eye.
Time, I thought, to swim for shore
Where hot white sands… enticed us more.
M.
Great Barrier Reef
January 1968
Apr 18, 2020
Apr 18, 2020 at 4:49 AM UTC
the silence of present isn't much more than a fright
a grumble of the world that cannot stop
even when the windows are closed
when clouds and morning stars
don't cover with heat the shoulders of the child
who sleeps in a corner of the room
but the dreams survive
like an island of garbage in the middle of Pacific Ocean
where a turtle once made love with a bag of plastic
where a broom thought of herself as a medusa
and fell in love with a barracuda
the kind of stuff that happens when the ocean comes
I keep waiting love to turn into a shell where I could lay down
but I can tell by observation that gravity will also hold our bones when the time comes.
Jul 30, 2014
Jul 30, 2014 at 11:47 AM UTC
The highway
is my girlfriend,
I love the black ribbons
she wears
in her endless hair,
flowing
we have
so much clean
fast-fun.
I tune into FM,
her radar love
& cruising in my Hemi,
a Barracuda swimming
at supersonic speeds,
I lean on the accelerator,
hitting hyperspace.
I find myself there
& loving
the transmission lines
on her worn face,
I fly alone
in the darkness,
on Route 41
driving
under stars.
Feb 27, 2014
Feb 27, 2014 at 9:15 AM UTC
Why do I keep coming here?
for it is not here nor there anymore
for that pathway that led me to him has been eroded by the waves of time,
and as I sit here beneath these entwined bridges
hurricane winds come to unravel all that I once held so dear,
but it was not to be
for oh don’t you all see,
that those teeth of that vicious barracuda have come inside of this place to gnaw away at each entangled thread of that distant horizon that has now turned black.
jo
Jul 14, 2014
Jul 14, 2014 at 1:51 PM UTC
Hook:
Hero’s and foe’s.
Assigned to roles.
Hero’s and foe’s.
Where Divide and conquer rules. (X2)
Verse: 1
Uh, check it!
Centripetal force coursing through the veins,
Mixed with henny, speeding through multiple lanes.
Rudimentary devil, spewing coarse language defying parental guidelines.
Villain of the century, swooning hearts whilst dismantling traditional racist designs.
Such craftiness, isn’t it wild?
That our worlds filled with such nastiness.
Bringing truth brought forth from past experience.
Yet people still look at me like some incompetent child!
But I’ll continue fighting,even if I end up like John Coffey from the Green Mile.
Plunging propaganda down the toilet,
Expunging paraphernalia that has left us exploited.
That’s why you shouldn’t underestimate an apple.
Classiness defiled, how vile, engulfing youth into the Bermuda Triangle.
Barracuda coming for ya,
In order to scramble the status quo.
A hero seen as a foe,
Misunderstood like Edgar Allen Poe.
A hero seen as a foe.
Misunderstood like the edge lord shadow.
Hook:
Hero’s and foe’s.
Assigned to roles.
Hero’s and foe’s.
Where Divide and conquer rules. (X2)
Verse:2
Chaos stems from abuse of power,
That will burn us like a fire power up flower.
But once that power is stripped away,
All your left with is scared little cowards.
So, why do we continue being submissive to these rat ********
Why don’t we question their status of master?
That wasn’t achieved but ascribed to fit dominant factors.
Making slaves of those they deem as common denominators.
Thinking they are the Luke skywalker’s of the story,
But are actually the Darth Vader’s.
Thinking those oppressed will simply forgive them if they say sorry.
Well, sorry but come back when your ready to change policies.
Ready to change racist terminology.
Ready to tax the wealthy and give it to the rest of our struggling economy.
Ready to make the curriculum honest.
You want our trust.
We want laws and legislation to not be racist and biased!
Ultimately, we are calling for justice!
We should no longer be foes.
Don’t ya know?
It’s not to late to become a hero.
Don’t you know?
We are all just misunderstood like Edgar Allen Poe.
Don’t ya know?
We are all just misunderstood like the edge lord shadow.
Hook:
Hero’s and foe’s.
Assigned to roles.
Hero’s and foe’s.
Where Divide and conquer rules. (X2)
Oct 27, 2019
Oct 27, 2019 at 10:49 PM UTC
**** near enough torque to bust a motor mount
little pig contorted her body
and sneered a smile
soundless barks
mouthed
she wiggled backwards all the way to the couch
turned, took a breath,
and went right back to wiggling –
rescue mutt
lab **** cut and pasted on a bull dog
front end
looking like a 73 Barracuda
ass-end way up high…
little spots above her eyes
reddish in the sunlight
show Rottweiler markings
so, at best, she is a three way fat head…
picked her up with the name Gunther,
for a little girl dog…. –
We called her Gunny
but almost instantly
she became a wiggle pig
a gunny pig bear
and the great spazzgunno…
never have I owned a better ****** –
May 16, 2016
May 16, 2016 at 5:05 PM UTC
Among the wreckage
of her soul,
lie shards of ribcage
(splintered like
the stern of a ship
that has weathered
many a beastly storm)
and fragments of heart
(veins as thin and lifeless
as the gossamers
of waterlogged spider webs).
Sunken treasures
you could call these things,
waiting in this perpetual limbo,
this Bermuda of Lovers Lost.
"Girl, overboard!"
he'd cried
(even though he
had been the one
to push her over the edge
in the first place).
Imagine that:
wrists tied behind her--
what hurts more?
The rope burns
or the cuts?--
feet sweeping despondently
across that doomed plank;
she can feel her love's breath--
frigid as Neptune's sea-bound winds--
undulating against the back of her neck.
She turns around slowly,
and he shoots her that
pathological
barracuda grin,
promises her that he cares--
truly, he cares--
that she means something to him.
But many a thing
a pirate does thief,
the truth
being one of them.
The next thing she knows,
she is plummeting
(watch how she does fall for him)
towards the convulsing
stretch of grey beneath her,
and as she whips about
through the bluster and the rain,
she stares up at him
with wild, pleading eyes.
She wants to scream out,
"Why?"
but there is no room
for words (or poetry)
upon the lips of the drowned--
after all,
dead girls tell no tales
Jan 3, 2019
Jan 3, 2019 at 1:21 PM UTC