"beachgoers" poems
Islamist Extremists. Boat Capsized.
Obama and Nelson Mandela. Celebrity Lies.
Plane Crash. Forest Fires.
Missing Girl. Handgun-buyers.
Amazon Lawsuit. ANT-MAN. Low Supplies!
Walmart Empty Shelves. Chinese Food Scandal.
Microsoft Layoffs. Heat and Gasoline. Oil.
Mad Max! Comic Book Convention Drama.
Breast Lumps and Swelling.
Television. Veteran's Hospitals.
Israel and Gaza Fight On.
Beachgoers Hit by Lightning.
Baseball Drinking Songs.
Sci-fi, Wi-fi, Ebola, and Libya.
Ukraine. Venezuela. Marriage. Liver failure.
Allen Webster. USA. RACE CARS.
Global Catastrophe Down to Warming of the Earth.
Dinosaurs Had Feathers. MH17. Profits.
Desert Bakery. Syria. We Must be Mad.
Philippines: 100 Million People on an Island.
Salmonella Lawsuit. Cheeseburger Diet.
Twinkies Never Going Bad.
Putin, Palin, and the Tour de France.
Fracking. Cats and Dogs.
Jul 27, 2014
Jul 27, 2014 at 10:36 PM UTC
Barnacles begin their lives as free-swimming larvae, ebbing and flowing with the tide.
Most are eaten, some wash ashore, a few survive long enough to attach
with freakishly strong glue their minute larvae heads to a final rock- strewn home.
There they spend the rest of their lives with feathery feet poking out of a hardened shell, filtering the sea for whatever happens to come within reach.
Why the barnacle starts out free
and ends up bonded to some god-forsaken rock
to alternately dry out and be fed at the whim of the tide
is just one of life's many small mysteries.
While barnacles are meant to lead a primarily static life
human beings are not.
We are meant to flow
to settle and ground, uproot and travel
to seek
to speak well and listen better
to find meaningful answers.
We always have the choice to let go
of whatever safe, high ground we're frantically clinging to
though it will mean not knowing where we'll ultimately wash ashore.
Letting go can feel like being caught in a rip current.
What I know about rip currents:
They pluck hapless beachgoers from shore and pull them out to the ocean deep.
If you're caught in one and try swimming back to blessed land
you won't make any headway.
Eventually you'll grow tired and drown.
The only way to survive is to stroke like mad
in a totally counterintuitive direction
parallel to the solid ground you desperately want to reach
until you're out of the narrow river ******* you out to sea.
I've decided to unglue my little larvae head
from its rocky, self-imposed, falsely-safe perch.
Let the current carry me where my feet no longer touch the known.
It's up to me to swim in the right direction until I'm free.
Oct 29, 2015
Oct 29, 2015 at 9:47 AM UTC
Poseidon reared his unkempt head
Above the waves today
An ocean monster dripped in dread
Chest to chest with the bay
“Today, or any day at all!”
The shore-side heard his plea
Salt shucked shoulders tall as islands small
“No being shall ever challenge me!”
One gull omitted a thoughtful word
Which sounded much like “Rak!”
One offended brow raised at what he heard
Poseidon countered with a slap
Five foul fingers touched the sky
And fell upon the sea
A wave as great as mountains high
Sighed upon the beaches knee
With a drunken beat of lazy wing
The gull escaped his perch
Finding another on which to cling
Without a moment’s search
Fists clenched around the shallows
Poseidon was enraged
With urchin riddled lips pursed he bellowed
And blew the beach away
Up went beachgoers along the coast
Into the sandy storm
Sun chapped mums beginning to roast
Castling children, One man named Norm
Gull glided softly on the wind
Providing a flap or two
And to the defeated Poseidon's chagrin
Let out a cantankerous coo
In one last fit of aqueous rage
Posiedon surfaced to land
And in a briny blind rampage
Grabbed the gull with swole hands
Gull in hand Poseidon yelled
“What dare you mean sly poultry?
My kingdom is unparalleled,
All pilgrims seek my choultry”
But the oily gull slipped through his grip
And flew quite far away
And as he watched it dive and dip
He came to see the bay
Debris was strewn across the sand
His subjects were in ruin
Disaster spread across the land
And it was all his doin’
A desperate shade turned Poseidon
As he returned to the great deep
“What use am I as a mighty king
If protection I cannot keep?”
That is how a seagull won
Against The God of Sea
Who forgot about his job, just one,
To keep the big blue world carefree
Dec 26, 2020
Dec 26, 2020 at 9:17 PM UTC
trudging slow past milder new york beachgoers,
you stooped in the sand to pick up a shell,
and i crouched with you.
you told me as a little girl you would fill buckets
with shells, and the next day they would “smell
halfway to kentucky”
you picked out a tiny shell for me,
and i tucked it away in my denim pocket
and today, i dont smell halfway to kentucky
but my nose is burnt pink from looking up
and smiling southward
Sep 28, 2015
Sep 28, 2015 at 3:21 PM UTC