"chinook" poems
Redds shine like new nickels on the dark river bottom,
salmon have returned to spawn the Deschutes,
navigating by primal memories written in DNA,
an internal Tom-Tom GPS wired in their brains.
Watching them struggle up the ladder,
consumed with a drive to leave offspring,
they are herculean athletes battling
the current and the inexorable pull of gravity.
Were these the fry I helped to seed four years ago?
A Squaxin woman told me once,
ghosts of her Coastal Salish ancestors
ride the salmon out to sea and home again.
Roe in these redds dream also of the sea,
their salty eyes and nostrils perceiving
spirits in secret claret-red kelp beds.
The waters ask only to be haunted again.
Feb 20, 2012
Feb 20, 2012 at 5:20 PM UTC
Marinate me in sterling serendipity;
a lace handkerchief blowing in electric blue
Chinook.
Howl and twist your obsidian spit down
her leather throat until she reproduces
glass golem.
Clang & the brass of the thunder,
muffled underneath a Reith that was last
lathered
in hathgraven gatherings.
**** him with your sour tongue
&
rag water whistle .
Cut him down from that arugula suspension
&
let gravity fold into him,
like an aluminum foil gargoyle,
crush to the core.
Sep 28, 2014
Sep 28, 2014 at 9:35 AM UTC
I am like a lone wolf who hastens across the tundra of Northern Hemispheres, with stealth.
Our temperature has risen and the Chinook boldly reveals her austere formation across the vast expanse of alpine variation.
I understand that your customs may be nomadic, as they roam across the treeless plains of baron socialisation.
But will they lead you beyond the West coast of Ecuador?
Therefore, always remember that layers of permanently frozen subsoils are designed for terrestrial corridors of arctic sojourns.
Nov 17, 2013
Nov 17, 2013 at 12:41 PM UTC
I walk down the pier,
All sea-salt dreams and hand-spun darkness
The buildings are bent from the wind
As are the people inside them
But it is voluntary,
So they still appear strong.
A man sits on a corner
Wearing only his clothes and half-moon smile
I think he must have been born
Before the flood took Kwakwaka’s voice
And thunderbirds were more than midnight cries
Of feathered laughter on the Chinook
I think he must know that for which I search
He calls me over to his barnacle throne
And says in a black-bear voice
“If its fish you want,
Be here before the rain
That comes on the heels of daybreak
And buy from the man with the golden tooth,
His fish are good
And his hands honest.”
That night I dream of lighthouses
And the way the stairs wind like a promise
Out of the toss and turn of the night
And the way they hold boats and the men inside them
All those tangled strings
In a fist of yellow light
And the way that light becomes a phoenix
To those who choose to give the land a second chance
Or a third, when the sea proves more fickle a friend
Than the women who have given up hope
Of being more a lover and less a lion
Than the blue-dress lady with a red-dress song.
At daybreak there is a black bear at a fish stand
His arms are laden with bodies like silver coins
I know he does not fish for wealth
Besides that of the wisdom brought
By knowing your home and purpose.
I think he must know that for which I search
He calls me over
And says in an old-man voice,
“If its love you want,
Be here before the sun
That comes on the heels of the breaking tide
And watch the one true glory of the earth
Give birth once again to forgiveness.”
I believed what he said because I could still see
The sunrise reflected in his eyes
Like a prayer.
At dawn there are two figures on the horizon,
Hand in hand,
Brothers maybe,
They jump into the breathing chaos
Of the still-dark waves
And become the fish that beat in their mother’s chest
Become her heart and her blood,
Her veins and
Her children
Jan 27, 2012
Jan 27, 2012 at 6:52 PM UTC
In my mind, as infinite as the heavens,
I am but a starry eyed stranger
Wandering through her shimmering realms
Beneath an ebony sky, laced with crimson,
Beclouded with spiraling sprays of stardust
A child, a warrior, a saint full of sin,
I pass through the vapour of my shadowselves
Layers falling away like rotten tree bark
Exposing the rings within, like fingerprints,
Looping coils of time, bending but unbroken
Somewhere in the distance a dragonfly dances on the surface of the water,
Unknowingly admired by a sharp toothed Chinook
As another lost soul pulls back on a well worn syringe,
Seated on a broken toilet, slowly leaking across the scarred, yellow linoleum.
While a mother in Africa nurses a starving baby from her malnourished breast,
A stomach ravaged by dysentery,
Lips cracked and bleeding beneath the relentless heat of the sun,
And a pimple faced pop star sips champagne from a crystal goblet,
Wearing eight hundred dollar sunglasses and basking on a beach in Barbados,
Where they will spend more on hotels and liquor for a week than most families will earn in wages all year.
I close my eyes to imagine a world where only dragonflies sip champagne,
and people ACTUALLY care about one another.
But the former seems more likely than the latter...
So I return to my inner sanctuary of dreams...
And once again, I am infinite.
May 27, 2015
May 27, 2015 at 10:00 AM UTC
Flood every grocery sack with opened up noodle boxes.
Ask the butcher for fresh chinook salmon.
Bother the pharmasists for a secret remedy until he sighs and gives in.
Give the lady yourcalifornia sunshine drivers license when she yawns and
Has to make sure you can buy a bottle. ( I imangined what happened after we danced.)
She moved my pulse like safeways selectice bold brazillian roast.
I believe her secret recipies for pickled seduction.
Every first isle Leaves me happily underneath the celings act three popcorn
Until I beg her to hold like fresh melting george forman grilled cheese (what I was looking for a long time from now)
The iron clad grill Whisperes"you have found her missing grocery list". Why has her bias condemmed possibilies canned tuna fish in oil. Theres nothing to see insider her locks of eggplant stems. i can find a alternative way to cash my sacronized invisible receit stamped with red words raincbeck. I couldnt afford you impulse items.
Sep 16, 2013
Sep 16, 2013 at 2:09 AM UTC
memory sleeps
beneath time’s blanket,
closes its eyes,
and disappears in dream.
life is leveled, edges beveled
smooth and regular.
days pass.
thirty-seven years later
a helicopter is shot down
in Afghanistan.
men are lost
and fear chokes me
again, high above hills and jungle,
taking fire from below,
a Chinook just like theirs,
frantic to fly
away.
Jan 29, 2010
Jan 29, 2010 at 6:34 AM UTC
What I Mean When I Say Chinook Salmon
By Geffrey Davis
My father held the unspoken version of this story
along the bridge of his shoulders: This is how
we face and cast to the river — at angles.
This is how we court uncertainty. Here, he taught
patience before violence — to hold, and then
to strike. My fingers carry the stiff
memory of knots we tied to keep a 40-lb. King
from panicking into the deep current
of the stream. Back home, kneeling
at the edge of the tub with our kills, he showed
the way to fillet a King: slice into the soft
alabaster of the pectoral, study the pink-rose notes
from the Pacific, parse waste and bone from flesh. Then,
half asleep, he’d put us to bed, sometimes with kisses.
Dec 20, 2015
Dec 20, 2015 at 6:27 PM UTC
latin can not describe the electricityof blue veins suspended in cala lily skin. they fan out,protazoic, dormant beneath a sea of iced flesh.i grip the sink, peroxide strands of kelp washing upon the banks of my shoulders likethe white-gold sunshinethat would prism behind your chinook archwith all the beauty of a nuclear winter.for the transplant of my frontal lobeto the heaven above his stratus comforter, instructionshave been written. next time he is carried in on a foen wind i am toone, stand very stilltwo, present my brain to the skyand three,wait for the apricotsof sunrise to settleinto the overcast of his eyes.i practise a little and wish i had a veinous hum, skepticalthat an electrocardiogram could detect a beat.
Feb 22, 2010
Feb 22, 2010 at 11:27 AM UTC
Letters of love.
Show me the barrier
That seperates continents.
Will I know
The oceans sink
The love I send.
Wrap me up in glue
And seal the words
I love you in the conflict.
Lonley is the sour milk
On my desk.
The smell of socks rotting
In the wrestlin room.
Brings back the yoga from moorakas.
Make me fresh like a corpse of
Dead chum.
Fill my heart in a river from the
Red eggs I killed and gave to
Crab fishermen.
The heads are open with clear kelp teeth.
Unwind the widdower who says
To punture her lungs with a knife.
He knows the pain and conflict
When she breaths to die.
Snap a picture to tells us 100 feet
From air yeilded a 25 pound trophy.
The stranger lets us watch his knife
Open a rare white chinook.
The fire we watch was gutted and rinsed
In a metal sink.
The deeper we dig into flesh
The more we see war.
But the smell of salt water
And white bones
Feeds fresh souls.
And smokes our dreams when the red metal who
Holds hickory ambers.
The solitude is unforgiven when I
Die in dreams.
Therfore I wake up next to
The chunks and blood red wine
As though gun shots provide reflection.
Back pack with me in empty meditations.
And understand we all must progress
Into the conflicting heart,
And see what cardiac death
Hides behind the scary last breath
Of euphenasia in my mind.
Nov 20, 2013
Nov 20, 2013 at 5:26 AM UTC
To pelt the world in ice and graves.
To feel how quiet this part of town feels
When the lites turn on we will not sleep.
We will not dream of anything tonite
We will run like the chinook salmon runs
To flood the world in rivers alive
With pain the pain of peace.
The pain after loss.
What will come here when the hedges pop
Out like boxing gloves.
Out of me is songs apollo sang.
Out of him and I we dance with
Wounded leggs. And prove
How sweet salt tastes on gashes of death.
How sweet to taste imortality when
The cars speed.
What now is a world full of saints.
To fill markets with fresh fish.
And throw the bottles of whiskey
Where they belong. Where they are warm
Proves how hot my sweater gets when my
Forhead clams up.
My scarf unwraps and we run
With out our cloths down pearl street.
Let there be muse forever on feet and side walk.
We mustnt forget why we break free from
The shakles of eternity.
The horrible shakles of wild life.
Are finally pure gold.
The softest medal to bend.
And we leave the tempting
Medal behind and choose to
Drink the rain drops.
Nov 15, 2013
Nov 15, 2013 at 1:08 AM UTC
It is all flowing uphill
back into the tributaries
into the headwaters
Life returns to its source
at the end
Chinook salmon spawn in their natal streams and die
their bodies nourish their young
who make haste to salt water
then return from the sea
to repay the favor
Uphill it is for us
a long slog, it seems
We are dedicated enemies
of entropy
unconscious
yet knowing our duty
So these are your instructions.
You must wake each day
and know it as a gift
never pause in worship
never cease your upstream struggles
until it is time
for such foolishness to end.
Grit and muscle
heart and will
life is short
yet sweeter still.
Dec 31, 2017
Dec 31, 2017 at 3:15 PM UTC
The Chinook and Monsoons have no effect.
Bring rain or snow, sleet or hail.
The Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn
Can shift or stay.
The wadi and oasis can pool or dry.
Fogs can roll, jet streams can carry their worst;
Hurricanes and tornadoes can wreck havoc.
This is my Kouri, my Oued, myTog.
All the animals are welcome to eat and drink.
There's plenty.
Migration is unnecessary.
The watering holes are wet or arid.
The desert can bloom or hide.
The skylights can shine or dim;
Moons can be full, new or in between.
This is my Nahal, and my Nala,
This is my Dry Season.
As expected,
Feast is followed by famine;
Plenty by scarcity.
Inhale, exhale.
I shoot a shot of Jamie,
Having watched it pour,
That dram of gold
Eclipsing all that shines.
That one diluvial ounce:
Then my cave calls.
This is my Akhet.
My Wet Season.
I enter sapien-like
And grow hair.
The animals scatter.
The cave fills with bones and bottles.
I eventually emerge
With the changing of the season,
With the return of reason,
And see;
Then hope
My dim familiar shadow
From the dry season
Will lengthen.
All I need is water.
May 12, 2014
May 12, 2014 at 2:58 PM UTC
cobalt rain
rides the foothills
mountains conspire
in malevolent
cloud lairs
beneath gray waters
she treads
the warming sea
in constant current
scaled desire
burnished crimson
silver sleek
with ripened need
she lives to die
upstream
Jul 19, 2016
Jul 19, 2016 at 9:42 AM UTC
(sonnet #MMMMMCCCLXXVII)
I'm not asleep. But wakened, tiptoe thence
Through every minute like to dare exhale
Is not allowed, as if to breathe would hail
The end of visions roused to caper whence
No concrete line shall say, whileas suspense
Knows Janry shows our breath in sheer betrayl
As snow feels that chinook's touch, waxing pale
Though I still walk upon its face tward sense.
And hear a distant blue jay's cry bestir
Young Saturday's thin silence like he knew
What I maunt parse out 'til what aye? as twere.
Oh yes, the sparrows' playful calls heard too
Whilst carving out the eggs, and thought in poor
Excuse I'll be half good, erm, just for you.
09Jan16b
Mar 6, 2016
Mar 6, 2016 at 10:50 PM UTC
creep, creep up along the carpal
brush, sweep, like a chinook in passing
tempt, taunt, the heart begs for more
collapse, give in, finally at home
Oct 12, 2014
Oct 12, 2014 at 11:33 AM UTC
it's not the first time that a Bristol Belvedere
(type 192) helicopter flew over my
house...
am i right in thinking
i'm somehow associated
with the army?
ah **** for amusement's sake,
have a funny thought
(cognitively speaking
funny via mere thought
you're into sit-down comedy,
appropriately suggestive
as a delusion - but funny as **** -
pardon my french -
on a rocker with dell boy over 'ere,
mm mange tout, mange tout -
mon rz too, mon ż too -
honestly, check my search engine
IP address statistics,
most of them begin with:
polish diacritical z / s / c / e / a / n / o / l);
actually the Bristol Belvedere
is debatable... it might as well have
been a Boeing CH-47 Chinook.
May 3, 2016
May 3, 2016 at 11:05 AM UTC
Dual rotors spinning
Sitting ducks fly in mid-air
God, please speed this up
Jan 4, 2014
Jan 4, 2014 at 11:05 PM UTC
Something will be found which they cannot express.
The crowd in your white lace dress!!
Your mind thorougly smug
Beneath your wet hairs
A kitten of our love
Oh yea it is shadowed green half way
Round a billion christmas trees
White washed with star bleach!
An evning in a wall frozen like apples...
I felt spiders, lime water poising my skin
like Hiroshima,
The falling iguanas (fake)
I lied.
Nothing from south america becomes sand like japanese papers. Another great poem ******
(2)
On the airof this busy pitty progress- I squeal electric darkness.
May i feel
May i feel
May i feel your divine maze of unsucess?
In desserts very clean. Thefront yard decided much so or pain.
The street light in desperation was postphoned with recent tears
With recent tears, thick syrup, over winter honey.
Seattle dusk is turned to grand piano keys
With goods. Pages of grim dead fish
Just **** money out of delicate breeding!
She blushes like a ruby chinook!
Now i have picked where to carve
Her unwrapped layers.
Beautiful things are softer then thin clear bones.
I know the dead are haphazards.
But im not much from another river.
I have ran over lastyears broken tides with snow bringing the scent of melted cheese.
And life is over
But often times with voice there is so much more.
Unreal crys, richly pay,half a block, red rosy eyes in the haze.
At last im getting a sweet pool of glaciar water- a sweet place to **** out my twisting invention. An excrement i started, imagination from my impulsive instinct.
Dec 17, 2015
Dec 17, 2015 at 1:07 AM UTC
air
you are a breath, fresh of it
blast
make me laugh
breeze
keep it easy
cyclone
hasty hurtful words
followed by
gales
of forgiveness
gust
oh!
blow
in my ear again
breath
taken away with a kiss
chinook
summer breeze
makes me feel fine
draft
make me shiver
flurry
my insides
flutter
my heart
mistral
we're rarely that cool
toward each other
unless (see: cyclone)
puff
the magic dragon
tempest
stormy passion
typhoon
come into the eye my darling
wafting
scent of love
whiff
when we blow it
whirlwind
us.
by definition.
whisk
me away
zephyr
gentle me again
This is, in so many words,
The rarefied air
we are privileged to breathe
Deep draughts of love.
Between you and me.
Breathe with me.
My beloved.
Breathe.
Oct 18, 2020
Oct 18, 2020 at 3:47 PM UTC
As i layed down on the old shoe polish porch
At the bottom
Where the river rests
I felt armistice
The slight whisp of Chinook camphene...
Loaded with caffeine
Lost in a dream
Of what could be?
A camphor smooch I seeketh to wake to,
Camomile drunkenness,
A bagged ducat, that I can keep safe and unseen!!!
As she shalt fadge me
To badge me
As I grab her in a romanticism novel hardback!!!
Ourn bodies tightened
Secretion smacks
Deeply to be immersed!!!
A temple
A ladder to god
A church!!!
To serve another as angels
As ourn creator to fasten ourn spirits as knitted sweaters!!
The worse goes away
For with one all things to get better!!!
Homely in ourn mansion
Though not made of brick and dust
Created by will,fate, and trust
Consumed by ourn hacer el amor!!!(love-making)
A knight hood
Of stories
Thou wouldst tell thy children before bed!!!
Tis,
We are them!!!
Tis,
They are us!!!
Jun 3, 2015
Jun 3, 2015 at 7:51 PM UTC
The midnight fires of early April
Fueled with Chinook winds , tended
on the hour ..
Oak smoke canopies obliterating
my vernal stars , choking visible breath ,
rushing into Camp creek lowlands ..
Shadow spirits growing taller with
each feeding , trudging lit furrows ..
" Heat your row , learn you garden ,
toil in Spring , reap at harvest .."
Apr 3, 2016
Apr 3, 2016 at 12:31 AM UTC
Nocturnes wide awake
All the days inside
Infant dreams
Nightly flights
Til morning
Blush/strokes twilight brightly
Blindly painting
Colors never before or ever
Since seen
But in slumbers’ deepest wish
These high-noon deserts
Brimming white Heat
Waves of ether
The ethereal bloom
Light defeats none but we
Moonless starlings
Cat-calm Cool turquoise
Tearless eyes emoting
Vast and fastidious
Chinook whirlwinds
Climbing the on-coming storm
Dreamer maelstroms
Fearless babes we embark we,
Dancers in the Dark.
Sep 20, 2019
Sep 20, 2019 at 12:55 AM UTC
I was awakened early one morning to witness the marriage of Winter and Chinook wind ! A sorrowful child conceived ! The pang of birth . A daughter began to wail outside my window ! 'Twas February , jealous , in search of her lover March , shrieking , calling turbulent , gusty winds from the western horizon ! Thor laughing out loud , shooting bolts of lightning across the wind racked treetops , mischievous Loki cackling , dancing a jig to the song of her broken heart ! She cried for many hours , tears running down our drive , collecting beneath the trees , turning the creek into a mighty river at sunrise ! Call me February from this day forward ! A flame seeking audience under the sea of regret , naked with a rose in one hand , drifting with great caution across the galaxy . Weeping , longing for the impossible , set adrift , alone from the very first day I can remember . Misunderstood , sadness followed by joyful creativity , sequestered , beat into submission with hurtful words , seeking the month of my rapture , love and concurrence with my creator !
Nov 4, 2015
Nov 4, 2015 at 12:31 PM UTC
*I dwell inside the coppered forest confusion
Among straight evergreens pining for blue windows ,
in the illusion of being the only man on earth , in the
union of sycamore and birch ..
May contrails be arrows shot from appeased gods ,
may cirrus clouds take the shape of horses in battle from
the very stables of Olympus
The chatter of the raven and melancholy dove , mercurial
raptors announcing their presence from high above
Accept a brother shunned , a native son bridled in despair
Wearing battles upon both arms , seething in emotive turmoil
Bearing tokens of love for every fish , mammal and serpent
The warmth of July in Chinook winter winds , the crisp air
of Autumn for the dog days of August , a crown of azaleas
with Cherokee roses in the Appalachian snowfall amidst the Indian forest
May flocks of pelicans continually grace her windswept , turquoise shores
May the voices of bobwhite quail address her plains forevermore* ...
Feb 10, 2017
Feb 10, 2017 at 2:02 PM UTC