"beached" poems
Who knew the soft breeze
Was merely a tease
And sunrise a false fire,
The waters once calmer
Inviting and promised
A siren’s calling horror.
Quiet Lake a liar,
liar.
My God has watched the wind turn and many a son die, though I did not pay attention to deaths jealous eye.
The shock grasps and pulls until you know its true,
The best of us was taken
And I was left to you
The shadow on his chin in that early golden glow,
stuck inside the tent I did not know.
That the paddle of their canoe through the calm breeze would be
the last I’d see--
Island time clocks slow like a grief as it grows and regret in often company.
Who gives a **** island was stretched from shore to shore,
Divided by that cold wet demon
A womb of lost children, a watery graveyard.
All for smoke and fire they paddled their canoe
One beached on land like a salty sailor
The other exiled to hells blue.
The tragedy—whose heart weighted in gold left my copper soul rusted, the brakeman sold the purest human I’d known and grief clocks slow when you keep waiting for his body to surface.
Oct 28, 2012
Oct 28, 2012 at 11:59 PM UTC
They set off from white rocks,
red geraniums, blue tile,
and let the green sea
lift and drop their ships far above the white foam waves.
The stony islands that were home
were swallowed in minutes by the hungry Atlantic
but they hunted the big fish,
the giant whales with human eyes
who rolled and sang and swam
in oceans a continent away.
They came from Sao Jorge, Sao Miguel
Faial, Pico, Terceira, Horta -
Nine island emeralds set in a black volcanic chain,
neither of the old country nor the new:
Halfway there and halfway gone -
secret jewels of the Portuguese sailors.
They sailed into unknown waters,
south around tropical shores
where dragons smoked and writhed on the rocks
and birds with brilliant red and yellow plumage
rose in clouds around their heads.
Then north, and north, north again
to colder waters
where sea lions barked and lunged
at the strange massive wooden beast
that coursed the waters,
strung with brown bodies swaying
on the lines and cursing the sails.
North still they swept
casting contemptuous eyes on
the cheap turquoise waters and monstrous slow turtles
of the Sea of Cortez.
Coming up from the desert, past the palms and the yucca,
the Joshua tree and Spanish daggers,
they chased their smooth grey prey,
riding the vast Pacific on their wooden island,
herding the leviathans onto their spears,
adventurers with an audience of only
gulls and sky and seal.
Until they sailed too close one day
to a rock-strewn shoreline
and saw the golden hills.
Gnarled oaks like grandmothers from home
with orange poppy jewels at their feet,
missions strung like beads in a ruby marked rosary.
The boats slowed, ****** in by a Scylla of soil
rich and brown and loamy
waiting to be seeded with grapes and apricots
peaches, avocados, lettuce, alfalfa,
fertile and heavy with sweet promise.
And the whales sang and the lions barked and the gulls cried
but the sailors were entranced, encharmed, ensorcelled.
The treacherous sea, the mysterious deep, the stony jewels of home,
called and wept
and waited in vain for the sailors
- beached and grounded -
cutting not waves but earth,
tracking seasons not whales,
seduced by dirt.
Nov 29, 2014
Nov 29, 2014 at 9:51 PM UTC
It is just a fact:
My heart is a beached whale
Sitting on a dying sun,
Waiting on the tide to come,
There's a fisherman and a hook
Trying to catch me all day
Moving his Life on a raft
On top of the ocean’s spray
Those mermaids been teasing for a ****
Just,
Swinging feet on a lunar bench
Twilight knocking me off,
Clouds softly catching a melon lost
Sleeping to a dream I knew would
believe...
the
Space Fire I believe
is a red comet in love.
What are we worth?
but precious hearts in a
cold dark
we find warmth in the fire
fed with desire
together we can make a great spark.
stranger to far off lands,
looking back at what i had.
falling forward into quicker sands,
holding on im scared to stand.
ugly moon grabs her tides,
thrusting me onward to black skies,
and i know i know i know,
theres life on mars...
Oct 28, 2012
Oct 28, 2012 at 9:11 PM UTC
drip... drip ..drip
feel the cold water
hit your empty stomach
just take little sips
stomach growls lull me to sleep
i don't like a full stomach
i don't care that it makes me weak
i don't see a cookie
i see 120 calories
22.8 g carbs, 14.4 g sugar
this is my daily life I'm not a rookie
water has zero grams
of sugar,carbs and calories
so I drink water
i have water for dinner
and for a snack
i avoid the scale
i don't weight myself anymore
cause it makes me feel more like
a beached whale
i don't eat breakfast
i eat one meal at 3pm
some people notice so
i just lie and say I'm fasting...
Mar 1, 2019
Mar 1, 2019 at 1:51 PM UTC
A woman drew herself up from wrecked wood at the bottom of the ocean;
whispered sea-songs into the wistful ear of a long lost love;
shook her locks 'til his heart beat faster;
looked longer than she should into the deep pools of his pleading eyes.
"I will call you when I want to;
I will call you when I want."
Cooled his temples;
breathed her watery breath
as silvered beads streamed down his shocked skin.
.......
Rumors rock an empty drifting boat;
a glazed shell faced with priceless pearl
broken from its moorings,
strangled by a knotted rope.
"You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you"
Hold fast the bestowed gift,
your Quinquireme of stowed treasure.
Protect its precious structure.
"Who are you, the one who stripped my soul?
Who is the third who stole yours?"
.........
Broken from netting I lie
a beached starfish on burning sand,
wishing the waves to wash me
back through Time's receding current
to find the silence that once was;
to turn away before the sacrifice,
before the Eye of the storm.
copyright © Caroline Grace 2010
May 20, 2010
May 20, 2010 at 2:05 AM UTC
"There are animals in the road"
the traffic reporter said
"We're not told what they are
find another route instead"
And so I got to wondering
though I wasn't going that way
what the mystery beasties were
that were on the road that day
Were they a herd of wildebeeste
who took a wrong turn on the veldt
or perhaps a wayward mule train
delivering some sacks of spelt
Maybe a team of trainee reindeer
diverted from the North Pole
or a bunch of llamas from Peru
that fell through a wormhole
Or bears, or wolves, or lions
could be zebras or kangaroos
surely not beached aquatic mammals
or elephants trumpeting the blues
Exotic beasts seemed unlikely though
it was more likely cattle or sheep
though it could have been migrating badgers
moving goalposts somewhere safe to keep
Cynthia Pauline Jones, 27/10/13
Mar 18, 2014
Mar 18, 2014 at 8:36 AM UTC
There's a serpent around me,
Coils me close.
Rough skin scratching,
Holes in my coat.
It's rolling like waves of sand paper,
Tearing the life outta me.
But the closeness,
Reminds me of a time of peace.
Funneling poison down my own throat,
Grind my flesh on jagged rocks and roads.
Walking on hot stones to the motivate my step,
Putting on my anaconda scarf to keep warm from the daft.
If I am hurting,
Then how can you hurt me more?
Can't be drowning,
If I'm beached at shore.
My snake protects me with pain,
Chokes the hopes outta me.
I'm turning from blue to purple,
But let me drown in my own sea.
Nov 24, 2012
Nov 24, 2012 at 10:41 AM UTC
I scoffed at my minor cough
Until I was immobile as a sloth
I had to press pause on my life's tale
After I became a beached whale
And my body turned frail
In my illness jail
My stoic resolve tested
My pain threshold crested
The way I act is antisocial
The way I feel is anti-hopeful
For I treat others poorly
When I'm hurting sorely
In sickness for health
I give away my wealth
To feel one hundred percent
That's the physician's intent
To make me experience drainage
But I need the healing medicine
So I can practice the discipline
Of removing my diseased shark's fin
Ramses II, known as Ramesses the Great
Had a permanently fractured finger
And his teeth were significantly rotten
The pharaoh's excruciating pain
Must have effected his reign
A massive amount of men slain
Is discomfort what's to blame?
When there's no pain relief
We give each other grief
And there's a lion with a thorn stuck in its paw
Eventually that simple thorn becomes a claw
Nov 6, 2017
Nov 6, 2017 at 9:25 AM UTC
1
Grey sky greyer sea
a litter of rocks balance
coat bright hat blue mittens striped
as on these November steps
you collect the gifts of the ebb tide
2
Glint green this living tapestry echoes
Jilly’s field with tractor not Devon
but salt-flats rocky revetments moorland rising
a map crossed by a chiromatic line
our destiny marked out on this concrete wall?
3
Beached clinkered double-ender
a bay-courser sjekte strand-crunched
fit once for Viking raiders two abreast
now daubed with tin ends of patriotic paint
a sea-steed hobbled hard on the shore
4
Bow faced a sea helmet thrice rope strapped
slow moulded over the boat builder’s ribbanded jig
a spanglehelm of wood
curved sheer straked plank bilged a tuck stern
raising its proud head seaward
5
Viewed from the air a map rolls out
north to the tilted curve of the horizon’s rim
cloud scattered mountained red
betwixt seas sun chalked wine-stained a volcanic isthmus
provokes desert the western waste land of a brooding city
6
Oh face of ropes knot eyed!
you blue cheeked wide smiler
wild wild your head of hair
beachcombed and splayed
wrapped on the sternest post
7
She sewed sugar kelp on the sea shore
a sporophyte with sheltered frond
strap-like stem stiff and smooth
of the species saccharina a spring-tide
stalk set among substrates shells and stones
8
I the camera turned and caressed
by her slight fingers (the pinky raised)
my viewfinder close to her blue grey eye / I
focus on this kelp-needled novelty feel her breath
wait for the thumb press the electronic click
9
Here is the beach walked in darkness
the fishermen shadows against the moonstruck ebb
fingers laced the sea’s breath in our ears
wave upon wave un-folding on the sand and later
we unfold then draw back in love’s relentlessness
Sep 15, 2012
Sep 15, 2012 at 4:09 AM UTC
Trapped, trapped upon ground
No room to cry or escape
But your waves will help
May 28, 2014
May 28, 2014 at 4:27 PM UTC
I stand upon a familiar shore,
of white sands and ocean waves,
looked upon so many years before,
you and I joined as true loves slaves.
Salten sea breeze fresh upon my face,
casting mist and haze like some dream,
where I see that other time in this place,
bound forever, or so it then did seem.
In this place I now stand so all alone.
as if drawn across rolling dark water,
to calmer days once warmly known,
before love like tide ebbed unto it's slaughter.
Days when loneliness was an unknown.
where sun was warm, and seas were still,
before any storm squall gales had blown,
or wave and wind wrought it's winters chill.
You alone were there to share my time,
I recall beauties smile upon your face,
beauty before tears performed their crime,
it was you that made this a perfect place.
But this sand now beneath my feet,
leads nowhere I would wish to go.
My memories now of loves defeat,
in a time my heart still longs to know.
Sand worn away and faded coastal dreams,
waves roll and ebb high upon the shore,
eroded memories by times cold extremes,
Never to know the beach as in those years before.
Mar 31, 2022
Mar 31, 2022 at 12:20 PM UTC
my veins pump molasses
my dry heart belongs to the desert sands and i
cough
i cough up my childhood
memories scattering through the air like
d s
u t
i have been parched since birth, since the beginning of this journey
that never ends
i measure my height in sunspots and in the time it takes to forget where i'm from
beached without an ocean
dry and cracking like the desert soil, no hope of rain and no sign
of life
empty and hot and alone
my dry heart hides behind my bleached desert bones and i
drown
in the sand
Sep 10, 2014
Sep 10, 2014 at 11:02 AM UTC
I stand upon a familiar shore,
of white sands and ocean waves,
looked upon so many years before.
Salten sea breeze fresh upon my face,
casting mist and haze like some dream,
where I see that other time in this place.
In this place I now stand so all alone.
as if drawn across rolling dark waters,
to calmer days once warmly known.
Days when loneliness was an unknown.
where sun was warm and seas were still,
so long before any storms had blown.
I recall your smile there upon your face,
and you were there to share my time,
it was you that made this a perfect place.
But this sand now beneath my feet,
leads nowhere I would wish to go.
My only memory now of loves defeat.
Waves roll and ebb high upon the shore,
sand worn away and faded coastal dreams,
the remains of the beach,
that was ours before.
Mar 21, 2022
Mar 21, 2022 at 6:35 PM UTC
My vast heart views panoramas,
Of wide depths, open to oceans,
Sorrow has broke no thing alone,
A pink starfish legs under waters,
Arms ever sinking into wet sands.
*As tides roll in, the sea birds whirl,
Exploding clouds of spray an' skirl.*
My soul, washes up, for granted,
Untook leftovers of the beached,
Endlessly salt dry things all alone,
Holey shells, driftwood, seaweed
And half buried, one pink starfish.
*As tides roll in, the sea birds whirl,
Exploding clouds of spray an' skirl.*
Oct 7, 2015
Oct 7, 2015 at 1:50 AM UTC
The wind is violent,
Knocking, flapping and rustling,
Slapping, tumultuous
Rolling like waves
I am swept
Savoring the mad sea-breeze
Savoring life
Rolling the sweetness on my tongue
Palm fronds slap delicious
A storm is brewing
Ocean spray spits smartly
Birds give way
Mother Nature is respected here
Nothing is contained
To the Queen we all bow and give way
Glance furtively under slit lids
Perhaps her wake, her eye will pass us by
With no more than a slap or tweaked cheek
Her notice, her scornful gaze
Can turn our hearts to waste
Our lives to dust
Our ocean mother laughs at the weak
Barricade of glass
Her tinkling laughter can shatter dreams
But oh, her majesty
What glorious banners she weaves
To trail her horizon is fool’s folly
Her train may wreck,
Her abuses bruise us
But to behold her wake, her glory
Her tresses, her face
Risking defeat and death is
A small price to pay
Surfing the wind, surfing the sun
After all nothing remains the same-
And my life is but a mere passing dust speck
In the mote of her eye
Keep me here fair queen
Bowed by your feet
Please don’t rub me out-just yet
All sadness departs when I hear your music
In the rustling flapping of leaves
The ocean roars and thunder booms
Your symphony oh sweet dear
Your symphony this day
So priceless to pay
Melon rolls sweetly on my tongue
Drops of honey linger-a **** tang
Like a mermaid lying beached upon the sand
Gathering in the ancient hush of the sea
These rumblings of the planet
Sea spray bathing my face
Foam like the spurts of ***
From a loved one
Lovers embrace
The rhyme and song is ancient
I feel a soft hush rumbling lullaby
Sea song siren cry
The rhythm and lull
The beat like ***
An ******** crescendo
Again and again-my heart beats in rhythm to hers
The goddess of the sea
Surfing the sun, surfing the wind
Rays like waves splash my face.
May 28, 2014
May 28, 2014 at 7:26 PM UTC
This scent of you, it clings to my skin,
it clings like a rash that's boiled over from within.
I scratch at this poison that has marked my flesh,
the scent of you, at your very ****** best.
I throw off the covers and hit the wall with my fist;
should lust be a sin, if lust is like this?
And no matter what with who, how, what or where,
everytime i sleep i can feel your ****** stare.
And the weight of your fingers on the back of my neck
drives me to nightmares, and meaningless ***
Tinged by the moment and forgotten by the hue,
my arms are brusied easily by the scent of you.
I'm running wildly through bracken and fire,
i'm running as a beast would run from apathy and desire.
I, the lone wolf, i'm moonlit, i scratch and i howl,
at the memory of your face, and your sneering sharp scowl.
I, the lone rider, in flight fearless, reckless and abused,
I jump fields, catch branches, torn, bleeding and bruised.
I hide in the woods, and float in the sea
I'm hiding myself from the deepest memory of me.
You're the poision ivy to my deepest forest of bark,
You're the drifting snow to my deepest vision of dark.
This scent of you, it clings to my lips
and i bite my tongue as i stretch my fingertips.
There is no sense in this dirt that flies through my hands
my thoughts are lost as stone is lost in beached sands.
I rip at my skin and i tear at my voice
I made this my dealing, at my beck, at my choice.
I draw upon my body like a breeze skims the ground,
there is no more wanton whimper, than there is my sound.
And at night when the nightmares come and i scream in my sleep,
the scent of you overwhelms my body, and i sow what i reap.
I lightly collect my feelings and throw them in a box,
I wrap in chains and cover it in locks.
I have been fooled, i have been fooled and blinded by you
and this scent lingers, in a memory of a distant bluish hue.
I watch as you walk away, your hips sway, tail high
And i howl and i scream and i sit and i cry.
And whilst i linger alongside this sharp vivid movie scene,
i count my bruises and feel quietly serene.
Jan 27, 2013
Jan 27, 2013 at 5:59 PM UTC
I wanna marry a chav
that looks just like
Britney Spears,
now, not ten years ago---
Barefoot & pregnant in yoga pants,
Barefoot mother slipping
into black stockings---
She idolizes her rivals,
Wants to be her own evil-twin---
I wanna marry the **** out of her
& watch her belly grow
in the sundaddy-o---
I want to take her ***
To the ****** Islands---
And watch her beached,
She is the opposite of who she is---
Completely manic up & running
She who stays within reach
Of images drowned
Between an old lady’s thighs---
Mother slips on black pantyhose,
Adjusting the waist over her *******
On Thursdays, sunnyside
every other day
---
Mother 8 months preggers in yoga pants
Dec 22, 2017
Dec 22, 2017 at 9:58 PM UTC
On the mud flats of Padma Delta
where the mighty Ganges slides
into the Bay of Bengal
ships come to die.
Rusting oil tankers,
container ships from Panama
passenger liners,
and cargo ships from Zanzibar
North Sea fishing boats
research vessels and mother ships
anything that floats
each one has made its final trip.
Steel Leviathans
low tide beached
oil-slick stuck.
Metal monoliths
****** deep
into black sand.
The people of Sitakunda
come marching, ants
across the slippery surface
of diesel sand
to pick the carcasses apart.
Barefoot, with only blow torches
hammers and brute strength
wrenching rivets, nuts and bolts
breaching beams and deck
splitting welded seams
until the hulls are gutted
ribbed struts broken down
and torn from the edges of shape
Bit by bit
they scour and empty
right down to the core.
Bit by bit
they carry *****
to the waiting shore.
Where melting pots are kept boiling
giant stock pots stewing goodness
in a broth
but metallic flavours and oily spiced stench
hang in the misty bleakness of the bay
Skeleton hulks shift and ride
lurching, lifting with the tide
rolling, dangerous still
collapsing, with groaning creak
to maim, to crush and ****
the daring, the slow and the weak.
© M.L.Emmett
Nov 10, 2015
Nov 10, 2015 at 10:29 AM UTC
By some Remove privy to self-preservation's
extras...to be, or not to be had...beached, I've
been...electromagnetically torn asunder!
Odd sounds do, and do come in and out...
a crackly chirp singing the foundations of worlds.
The melancholia of space junk stuck to a mind of
distance...hoards copious amounts of love-filled
forgetfulness.
Bye...bye...Buddha, in all your "suchness"...bye...
bye...letting go is the only Way.
Dec 19, 2013
Dec 19, 2013 at 11:53 PM UTC
At dawn on my twenty fifth birthday
416 pilot whales beached themselves,
in the shallow tides at Farewell Spit.
I woke to rain on the wooden roof
of my new flat
and confused myself in unfamiliar blankets and
the words of your message,
written heartfelt and wobbly
in the early hours before morning,
caught in the marine ebb and flow,
that stranded us too.
Feb 10, 2017
Feb 10, 2017 at 5:06 AM UTC
My vast heart views panoramas,
Of wide depths, open to oceans,
Sorrow has broke no thing alone,
A pink starfish legs under waters,
Arms ever sinking into wet sands.
*As tides roll in, the sea birds whirl,
Exploding clouds of spray an' skirl.*
My soul, washes up, for granted,
Untook leftovers of the beached,
Endlessly salt dry things all alone,
Holey shells, driftwood, seaweed
And half buried, one pink starfish.
*As tides roll in, the sea birds whirl,
Exploding clouds of spray an' skirl.*
May 16, 2015
May 16, 2015 at 3:04 AM UTC
The ice cream van
Has today reached
The melancholic realisation
That the only kids who
Chase clocks for Mr Whippy
And lick the exhaust fumes
In nostalgia
Are the kids who are not kids
But who prematurely aged themselves
With lipstick kisses
And cigarettes
Lowered themselves into nooses
Of sweet-sixteenths
From the age of six
We are a generation of
Peter Pan inversions
We ran ashore
And beached ourselves
Beyond the lure
Of Neverland
We are a generation of
Failed cloud-catchers
Aspiring rainbow-clinchers
Secretly slipping our hands
Back into a dead air
Of former innocence
In the hope we’ll be able to
Retrieve the pieces we left there
We queue and scramble
Like gulls for
Inches we can claw back
Preserving our age in
Wafer cones
And bleeding snows
That glue between our fingers
Each 99 flake
Is a time machine
Which we spin like a music box
And wait for the rewind
Copper coins and sea stains
And we hope we’ll find
Some of the things we lost
But we cannot predict or realign
The atoms or twist ourselves
Back into them
So we sit and watch
The incorruptibility we once possessed
Perished
Sexualised
Corrupted
Pool in the March drizzle
Someone once said
That youth was a process
Of being torn in half
By the past that pulls you back
And the future that tempts you
Being too big and yet too small
Longing but fearing
But an ice cream van tells me
That youth is a process
Of trying not to drown yourself
In what you’ve never had
And when that ice cream van tells me to
MIND THAT CHILD
I can’t help projecting echoes
Of its wisdom
On to all who pass me by
Mind that childhood
Before there’s nothing left to mind
Mar 26, 2015
Mar 26, 2015 at 3:50 PM UTC
if my pen were a surgeon's blade,
cutting edge,
razor-made
to excise secrets suppressed
in closets of guilt
or shame;
like the married bishop
with the mega-church and
tera-ego,
trading ****** fluids
with choir boys
in the 9th grade
on wednesdays,
after bible study...
like the senator
with two right feet
preaching chastity
while playing footsie
with perfect strangers
on public seat # 2...
like the donald's high-ranking apprentice
who pulled the plug on mc
as he slept
then wept like boehner
all the way
to morgan stanley and
dean witter,
allegedly...
like the mayor out west
with pinocchio's nose
and jefferson's zest
for extra-marital ***
lies
and belligerence...
like the late king
of pop
who so hated
his beautiful black skin,
he beached it white
then paid m. lester
of similar hue
a loot times two
to weave a blanket,
conceive a prince
and deliver a french city,
allegedly;
I would be a lyrical surgeon
with a passion
for incisive prose,
spilling truths hidden,
whole and half
with the cutting edge
of a poet's pen
~ P (#Pablo#ls)
(8/14/2013)
Aug 14, 2013
Aug 14, 2013 at 8:29 PM UTC
Along a winding meadow way
Circuitous and pebble strewn
Towards a brook and down a slope
As morning sun outshines the moon
An expectation clogs the air
And all about the flowers turn
To face a wave of tidal light
To catch ablaze but not to burn
A dusky fragrance lingers still
And gathers calm as mercury
In solemn spots beneath the boughs
It lies in perpetuity
The weaving breeze is powerless
And banished by the canopy
Abiding there a myriad
Of all of natures panoply
Drift along now deeper still
A clearing basks amid the shade
An isolated paradise
A lonely little woodland glade
Where early spring regains the lead
And ferns uncurl a welcome hand
The nettles bare their jagged teeth
And offer up a reprimand
A dragonfly takes up my path
And leads me into humid heat
She weaves amid the reaching grass
And safely guides my straying feet
Between the rocks and rabbit holes
That litter my vicinity
The creatures in my path retreat
All sensing my proximity
A fallen trunk now blocks my course
Like driftwood on the shoreline, beached
Its peeling bark is spiraling
And pale in the sunlight, bleached
Enfolded in its limbs I am
As if they shaped themselves to me
As though a plan of ages hatched
And formed a place for me to be
**
Dec 21, 2013
Dec 21, 2013 at 9:02 PM UTC