"drownings" poems
The cello sings Ave Maria.
Distilled calm; blister packs
In a wet July.
There is peace in every grain,
So fine. Wore away the stone,
Three drownings in the sea.
Annihilation
To build a monument
We settle upon:
Our paradise recovery.
There is warmth after the rain.
Ukulele played on the
Gran Cervantes balcony.
Off-white scars;
Pyramids with no eyes.
Every stoner sleeps.
Every kind heart cries.
The Arc of Life sings a lullaby,
Still I cannot get calm.
In a wet July
A comfort to staying inside.
We tried, wore away our lungs,
Three renewals in the sea.
A leap of faith,
An old keepsake
We contrived upon:
Our lunatic discovery.
There is movement in death.
Pollen falls to the ground;
Exhale of recovery.
Dead-end joy,
Statuettes with no eyes.
Every criminal weeps,
Every kind heart lies.
The cello sings Ave Maria.
The strings that heal
In a wet July.
Jul 14, 2016
Jul 14, 2016 at 9:28 PM UTC
~
the smell of timbers,
aging in the sun and daily misting;
neath the shuffling sound,
footsteps of a man,
bucket filled with daily catchings,
the reeling in of memory’s castings,
of creosote's faint lifting,
drifting on the breezes;
of old tackle boxes,
of shrimp and lures;
the gatherings of hands,
ragged and weathered,
the collecting of years;
of hand-me-down hooks,
bobbers and sinkers,
the odd bits of dust,
gathered in corners,
pliers worn by use and rust,
save from drownings
grateful rainbows
one by one,
their too-short lives
extended with each
catch and release.
tired ropes wrapped
’round bent iron ties,
summer-time-baked...
cracked and dried,
by day's too old to count,
the numbers, the flutters,
since this heart began its bleeding,
it's journey beating,
floats of faded red and blue,
recall of a yesteryear
of a grandfather renewed;
the one-time, one-day
he and i walked
hand-in-hand
down a dusty road
to an old, wood fishing dock
on a grassy river bank;
dock and day long gone,
but love-scribed now,
deeply in this memory.
a day with rod and reel
when on a river long ago
a boy and a man,
an afternoon of fishing
to his heart listening.
a wistful day
of boyhood’s dreams
now in wishful haze;
forgotten midst
the growing years,
tumbling out in verse,
those smells, the sounds,
now reel out words
between the tears,
now catch-releasing,
a heart's docking...
and memory’s rebirth.
~
*post script.
funny, this memory thing... how we can be so not conscious of what lies ’neath its surface, but then is reclaimed in vivid, YouTube vision by the smallest sight, sound, or smell. with a childhood spent 8,000 miles and an ocean away from my home country, i have scarce few memories of my grandfather. today i am grateful to reclaim this one, a tearfully joyous recall of a six-year old's wonder-filled afternoon,
caught and released so long ago.*
Nov 1, 2015
Nov 1, 2015 at 4:22 PM UTC
at a pool party to celebrate no drownings
one hundred lifeguards, laughing and gloating
water was splashing, music was pounding
until they noticed jerome moody floating
May 17, 2015
May 17, 2015 at 7:51 AM UTC
Another, another! My fine-feathered brother
Tie me to the post and set me alight
I read the many poems you wrote
Please gag me with a spoon
I expect around 6 inches. Hoagie rolls of Garlic and cheese
Subway to the nearest, newest country
Let’s build nuclear weapons
Burn this mother down
I tore my shirt open when I looked at your mouth
The **** that I saw was more than I could handle
Let’s get crazy, baby
Let’s play schizophrenia
Foreplay, moreplay, doorplay, whoreplay
Rhyming is the second cutest thing you can do
With your mouth
Start yelling, I will, I will!
Champagne drownings
Mar 14, 2013
Mar 14, 2013 at 12:32 PM UTC
My skin left pierced;
From the gripping bite of your cold voice
Over top your cigarette breath you words still stunk
A lion-heart with a lying heart
You promised the waves of our love would never reach shore;
Instead you dumped me into shallow waters
Lying face down and still not standing...
My feet can't lock onto the drifting sands of your comfortability
so I stay there, trying to swim to my next lover
trying over and over;
...but drownings much easier
The more I turn blue, I cant seem to tell if my emotions are bursting through my skin
or the hypothermia from within.
My mind starts ticking;
My insanity seeps through but I believe it true
That once this clock strikes 12 that you'll be attached by another mouth
The boat we were once on together is drifting away
a simple memorial of true lovers lost
can't find the directions to each others heart
but hope for the best while were apart
*One day, I pray you'll float back here in my dieing last breath
and save me from my misery that you cause since.*
Sep 28, 2013
Sep 28, 2013 at 3:52 PM UTC
I am still trying my best.
Stretching my legs to the coastline,
lactic shackles of inertia
are cast off.
I remember the ease
of animating these young limbs-
concrete strut, woodland walk;
it is hard to think of you much these days,
even in the confines
of unread books and filter coffee.
I have forgotten you, your blue dress,
your punting on the Thames.
There are harder habits
than caffeine and rich women.
As Ol' Tom Waits says,
“you don't meet nice girls in coffee shops.”
The glass roof of the arcade
offers translucent sunlight,
a high-street retreat from the nature of the sea,
all mankind's institutionalisation,
all these walls and closing times,
bigger names over bigger signs.
I am still a rare sight of youth
amongst the patient, ringed eyes
of those book-shop loyalists;
a choir of silver on their heads,
acquired wisdom of faded routines,
old laughter etched like the Nazca Lines
in their faces, lips eroded and pale;
sexless in the fluorescent lighting.
Breathing spaces where life exists
are always held closest to the fear of death.
I am still finding a clean way of living,
a way to accept my place, my face
in the mirror of my self-hate, anxious words
and half-conscious recollections;
the remnants and scars from asphyxiation – old drownings:
the sorrow that separated myself from others,
the sorrow that separated you and I,
you and I.
Your pursuit of a well-ticked time-sheet,
my love for sentiments that rhyme.
I have learned the patterns of the waves,
the way money is exchanged.
Oh, my dearest depression,
my ache for acceptance.
My endless, endless ocean of blue
can be sad, so sad,
but it can be beautiful too.
May 10, 2015
May 10, 2015 at 5:29 PM UTC
give me love: not later, not tomorrow, not yesterday but today
i'm tired of hiding away to revise myself for you
there is no revising left,this is it
this is the conclusion
i know dear you liked the intro a whole lot more
im sorry, ive been chain smoking
constant painful inhales, to feel less drownings of anxiety
let my blood fill with toxins of alcoholic infatuations
another girl; kissing cheek and staring into pale blue eyes
the pale blue eyes i got stuck in for six months
on a break for revising, isolation from everyone
i changed
i changed
i changed
i faked happiness because i was not allowed to be sad
i changed
i changed
i changed
i got rid of the addictions all on my own
i changed
i changed
i changed
i am doing what makes me happy to impress you
i revised it for you, i rewrote myself for you
i changed
i changed
i changed
but i did not revise enough, so you found a new one
my size
my height
my hair color
my eyes
my ******* name; the same name
and you took her
and left me here
with my revisions
giving love, later, tomorrow, yesterday, and today to her
Dec 2, 2013
Dec 2, 2013 at 4:49 PM UTC
The bumblejunk doorhinge,
The greets labeled orange,
The smart-flats and bungalow'd keens.
I want you for waiting.
My trip-stick is failing.
We settle for high in-betweens.
I know not this purpose,
My heart fakes for circus.
My napsack is packed full of liens.
I fluster the roundings,
And muse over drownings. I
Limp on my confusiest things.
Sep 10, 2010
Sep 10, 2010 at 2:13 AM UTC
the road gathers itself like a drained old woman,
hunched over rags, beneath the gloomy crag,
sintering as it nears the beach,
worn out through time, impoverished
it has become reflective in the chittering half-light.
Eviscerated by the pawing waves,
contradictory cracks like entrails, hanging out
crushed into solitude , it redefines its continuous retreat.
In the reductive shade
it circumvents the cove, its tarmac withered,
a battered host to foreign weeds.
Sunrise chides the posturing sky, the sulking universal remnants
vanishing in the fenestrated glare. In the near distance, air unravels,
the moving storm exhaling slips of cloud
rapidly swarming like furious flecks of phlegm-sneezed out in perpetuity
between heat and cold.
The road lies entombed beneath a scree, tumbledown stones and dust.
Ramblers and cars have sought and found
an alternative route. The moistened rubble creaks
as liquid gathers in its shifting heart, crawling out in rivulets-the rain
descending like spit,
emolliating the countryside, shifting dollops of fetid mud,
enveloping like a furious aneurysm.
Sea and land entrenched in conflict,
a war of attrition always won by seas, unleashing energy
of mindful apocalypse in the manner of a gentle sigh.
The gaping abscess of scarred promontories tottering
like feverish drunks. The mouthed obscenities of carnivorous
birds radiates throughout the cove pinpointing local
drownings encrusted with salt. Sea upon sea impose themselves
enviously on rampant shorelines feasting on sand and rock. Never ending!
Plunging ever forward like a barren plough, receding, only to
re-site its casual fury-implosion upon explosion.
The road in its sullen retreat
stumbles through narrow valleys speckled
with gloom; trees with yellow flowers
blooming in crinkled shadows,
deer leaping through high-standing grass, mincing
between tall thin trees. Loping down
into the cities, it becomes a tousled high street full
of immigrants, all yearning for the sea.
Jul 27, 2017
Jul 27, 2017 at 12:59 PM UTC
There's a silence in this solitude.
Yet a calamity in the violent storm that is my thoughts
A violent riptide
drowning me under the weight of the
imagined pressure on my chest
Breathless
I'm falling into a rabbit hole
that is the mind
The thoughts are killing me
Black and white pictures
memories that only I recall
Talks that I have yet to have
People that I love
Those that I don't
Those that I desire
Those that I won't
My thoughts are an endless ocean
And I'm a shipwrecked sailor
Swallowing too much salt water
For these veins to keep pumping blood
And this heart to keep a steady rhythm.
May 6, 2014
May 6, 2014 at 12:12 PM UTC
My tears dress for cowardice.
They are always up on my eye lids ready to ashame me.
“the rain is about to befall!”
the cads care too much.
All these drownings of heart break paint me ****
you dignified it in sentences of two. “you cry often. You cry in front of everyone.”
you persuaded me about our fragile hearts.
Filled with softness and poetry.
“but that's our friend”
it got ingrained in my memory.
I trace it with my fingers in solitary. “in this harsh, cruel world.
Kindness is the greatest boon to have”
my lips curl into a warm smile. Though these memories don't come often.
They are trapped away in a dull corner of mind yet they come in time. Just how our paths collide
Messing up fate's tricks and twists
Those messed up calls,
messages built up on one and other, cancellation couldn't quite reach for our comfort with each other.
Sep 12, 2025
Sep 12, 2025 at 9:12 AM UTC
We can't remember our broken landscapes
A failure for another day
The portrait of how easy it is to sever chains
Now a picture lost
Handling these fortunes with damage
This is your disaster
A mansion's space filled with no stirs and burning timbers
Tonight thinking of torn moments
A weight with beautiful form
To focus on what is taken and what remains
To taint, that is our goal
Pink ***** running red
A green or blue fortune and its rust filled transfiguration
Cursed legacies
Not shameful but young
Slipping past collapse
For seasons of drownings
Hopeful and bare
Drown in the semi circles of her asymmetrical chest
Rest in a navel full of seed
Spilled in the vain context of a quickening fleeting love
Humanized anger lay naked
Core liquid
Lonely ground
Ecstasy burst
Infinite devour
Mother's sores heal
My own weep and lactate
A siren welcome
Sung and swayed
Reflections at a dark dawn
Nov 2, 2015
Nov 2, 2015 at 7:08 PM UTC
Troubles,
Oh, I got troubles.
I double down
I clown a round
I got a lot
A lot of troubles
I dare myself
I hope for wealth
And still am here
With all my troubles
I read my books
I payed my bills
And think my mountains
Think them, hills
I had a friend
I had a few
I had so many
None like you
I gave them pass
I closed my doors
I gave them mine
But never yours
I hope one day
That we can meet
In a bar
In a street
You and I digress, discreet
You and I who met one day
Passing torches on our way
Times did change
Lives we lived
You moved on
And Still I hid
Though the distance
And the years
All the drownings of our tears
And the oughts
The things we did
Things of nought
The things we hid
Small the world
Made of trouble
Made
of waiting
Made
to rubble.
Nov 29, 2016
Nov 29, 2016 at 6:34 PM UTC
At thirteen years old,
I learn that
not all mermaids are like Ariel--
some mermaids are sirens,
femme fatales of the seven sea
who lure sailors to their drownings
with sweet, nectared voices.
Still, I wish to don the life of a siren,
whose danger appears
dizzyingly seductive to me.
I have become fascinated
with the dark and the peculiar,
you know,
and, as a result, I too
have undergone a dark, peculiar
evolution--
and, as literature has dictated,
such a character as myself
is to be scrutinized
under an omniscient perspective:
She wears thick, purple eyeliner
and dresses only in
heavy blacks and deep blues,
an abrupt transition
from her previous adoration for
pastels and ruffled sleeves.
But it is not only her countenance
that is indicative of this disturbed youth--
there are the books she reads,
tales of death, gore, and
other macabre eccentricities.
Her favourite titles
are those by Edgar Allan Poe.
How suiting then,
that she should be an
Anabel Lee in the making--
"her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away...
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.-- "
she just doesn't realize it yet--
that she is a drowning girl impending,
that she was never to be the siren, after all,
but the poor fool
who succumbed to the siren's
dreadful tides.
Sep 12, 2018
Sep 12, 2018 at 3:18 PM UTC
There is a certain apprehension
upon learning
that one must sink before
being able to float. And swim.
It calls to mind previous drownings,
in and out of the water.
Of being pulled under
of thrashings
of water coming in and threatening
to overpower one's self.
But one plunges in
and acclimates
to the cold water,
remembering that even the
greatest among us must face
the unknown.
Aug 2, 2015
Aug 2, 2015 at 12:13 PM UTC
a truism, an overused, abused entrée to the first poem of the day,
they always are night-born, from a slow passage of dark to a light-triggering recording event, a 6 hr. poem period, gestation, incantation
and a sort of relief, temporary
*many the miles voyeured, a mentaller feasting sated,
simple rhymes to covet, rephrasing the complexities of
our other lives, where our sub-selfs exclaim, out loud!
this is me unchained, this is me chained, this is...someone*
*besotted by the rottenness of honesty, once air-exposed,
eyes fixed, no away-turntable, all that well hidden spoilage
in dreams reverent, forsaken, my ashamed-ness, is willing
taken to the scaffold, and by daylight first, perceived, conceived*
*we may examine the half of me, nay, the all of me, open-face
secrets secreted in my nighttime travelogue, of crimes, revelations,
insects, drownings, strawberry moons, all the fraying edges of a
linen covering, my cadaver pouch of well used words*
inscribed thus:
”human born from a sac, and to earth returned, in sackcloth
Jun 4, 2020
Jun 4, 2020 at 9:05 AM UTC
Lay down
With the summer slowly rising
And the sun finding horizon
It is only
That the seasons change too quickly
Rest your weary head
My love
Rest
And be assured
That I will love you
With veins that cause the rivers
When the drownings all in vain
Lay down
It was only the longest night
It was only the hardest fight
It is only
That these fleeting dreams escape you
Rest your weary head
My sweet
Rest
And know it true
That I will love you
Mar 7, 2017
Mar 7, 2017 at 4:32 PM UTC
A fat *****
Sitting in the seat, in the row in front of me.
His suitcase takes up another seat, left across from me.
This **** takes up four seats and it’s too much wasted space.
There’s so much space in the classroom,
I made myself quite the spectacle when I walked out
Ran into the teacher right behind the door, waiting
To see if the screening went well.
I’d seen it three weeks ago,
I told him so.
Made myself quite popular in one go.
Seems like it is my ego, (but the truth is, I really don’t know)
That prevents others from sitting close,
It’s fine, I don’t talk to them,
I couldn’t stand to.
Less than thirty minutes till Hoorn
A few more hours until bed,
And then all of the routine can start again,
I dream of a future, but when I’m awake
I’d rather not be a part of it.
Don’t want to participate.
I have nothing useful left in me,
There’s nothing I could say,
That would sway/ persuade the world
To turn the other way.
I’m no earthquake, no rain or thunder
Lightning strikes me, not I the sky,
And it’s in the dark that I cry.
Days have grown shorter,
Nights longer,
And the sun doesn’t set early yet.
There’s ten of me
Sitting down on my chest
Steamrolling down my back
And flattening me into the grains
Of the ordinary, common experience.
(Perhaps I’d like that best)
In the wee hours of the morning
I close my eyes and plan and plot
I stew until I’m blue in the face
And I’m itching to leave this place,
It’s then that the cuts and ropes
The drownings and falling downs
Lull me to sleep, and I breathe out
Sweet death, and when I wake again,
I live and take another breath.
Sep 14, 2021
Sep 14, 2021 at 4:49 AM UTC
Your eyes like falling stars, cascade
down, chasing Summer's drifting flowers,
their crescendo, with the breeze will fade
upon a wind-swept dance in this final hour.
And I saw myself in their somber drift.
Surrounded by the blooming scorpion grass,
I sank into the deep sea beyond the cliff
as each wave hammered a nail in my casket.
The briefest of drownings broken by a song
as a nightjar cooed from the dying laurel
in a perfect nest where his melody belong.
While my heart lapsed: yours felt immortal.
It's halt dismissed at the winding of vines
as your fingers are mine lastly intertwined.
Feb 27, 2022
Feb 27, 2022 at 11:20 PM UTC