Hotrod
Verse I

Wrenches clanging, knuckles banging
A drop of blood the young man spilt
A new part here, and old part… there
A hotrod had been built!
A patchwork, mechanical, quilt

Feeling good.  Head under a raised hood, hands occupied, the job nearing completion.  Sometimes the good feelings would dissipate though, as quickly as they came, as he cursed himself for stripping a bolt, or cursed someone else for selling him the wrong part, or the engineer whose design goals obviously did not consider “remove and replace”.
He cursed the “gorilla” that never heard of a torque-wrench, the glowing particle of **** that popped on to the top of his head as he welded, the metal chip he flushed from his eye, and even himself for the burn he received by impatiently touching something too soon after grinding. 
 He, and his type, cursed a lot, but mostly to their selves as they battled-on with things oily, hot, bolted, welded, and rusty – in cramped spaces. One day it was choice words for an “easy-out” that broke off next to a broken drill bit that had broken off in a broken bolt, that was being drilled for an easy-out. 
  Despite the swearing, the good and special feelings would always return, generally of a magnitude that exceeded the physical pain and mental frustration of the day, by a large margin.  
Certifiably obsessive, the young man continued to toil dutifully, soulfully, occasionally gleefully, sometimes even expertly, in his most loved and familiar place, his sanctuary, laboratory… the family garage.

And tomorrow would be the day.
With hard learned, hard earned expertise and confidence - in this special small place, a supremely happy and excited young man commanded his creation to life.

Threw a toggle, pressed a switch
Woke up the neighbors with that *******

The heart of his machine was a stroked Chevy engine that everyone had just grown sick hearing about.  Even the local machine shop to which the boy nervously entrusted his most prized possession had had enough.  “Sir, I don’t want to seem disrespectful, but from what I’ve read in Hot Rod Magazine, you might be suggesting a clearance too tight for forged pistons…” then it would be something else the next day.  
One must always speak politely to the machinist, and even though he always had, the usual allotment of contradictions and arguments afforded to each customer had long run out – and although the shop owner took a special liking to the boy because, as he liked to say, “he reminds me of me”, well, that man was done too.  But in the end, the mill was dead-on.  Of course from the start, the shop knew it would be; that’s almost always the case; it’s how they stay in business - simply doing good work.  Bad shops fall out quickly, but this place had the look of times gone by.  Good times. 
 Old porcelain signs, here and there were to be found, all original to the shop and revered by the older workers in honored nostalgia.  The younger workers get it too; they can tell from the co-workers they respect and learn from, there is something special about this past.  One sign advertises Carter Carburetors and the artwork depicts “three deuces”, model 97’s, sitting proudly atop a flathead engine, all speeding along in a red, open roadster.  Its occupants, a blond haired boy with slight freckles (driver), and a brunette girl passenger, bright white blouse, full and buttoned low. They are in the wind-blown cool, their excited expressions proclaim… "we have escaped and are free!" (and all you need is a Carter, or three).  How uniquely American.

The seasoned old engine block the boy entrusted to the shop cost him $120-even from the boneyard.  Not a bad deal for a good high-nickel content block that had never had its first 0.030”overbore.  In the shop, it was cleaned, checked for cracks by "magnafluxing", measured and re-measured, inspected and re-inspected.  It was shaped and cut in a special way that would allow the stroker crankshaft, that was to be the special part of this build, to have all the clearance it would need.  The engine block was fitted with temporary stress plates that mimic the presence of cylinder heads,  then the cylinders were bored to “first oversize”,  providing fresh metal for new piston rings to work against.  New bearings were installed everywhere bearings are required.  Parts were smoothed here and there.  Some surfaces were roughened just so, to allow new parts to “work-into each other” when things are finally brought together.  All of this was done with a level of precision and attention far, far greater than the old “4- bolt” had ever received at the factory on its way to a life of labor in the ¾ ton work van from which it came, and for which it had served so dutifully.  They called this painstaking dedication to precision measurement and fit, to hitting all specifications on the mark, “blueprinting”, and it would continue throughout the entire build of this engine.  The boy remained worried, but the shop had done it a million times.

After machining, the block was filled with new and strong parts that cost the young man everything he had.   Parts selected with the greatest of effort, decision, and debate.   You can compromise on paint and live with some rust,  he would say, wait for good tires, but never scrimp on the engine.  Right on.  Someone taught the boy right, regardless of whether or not he fully understood the importance of the words he parroted.  His accurate proclamation  also provided ample excuse for the rough, unfinished, underfunded look of the rest of his machine.  But it was just a look, his car was, in fact, “right”.   And its power plant?  Well the machine shop had talked their customer into letting them do the final engine assembly - even cut their price to do it.  To make that go down easy, they asked to have two of their shop decals affixed to the rod on race-days.  The young man thought that was a fair deal, but the shop was really just looking out for the boy, with their herring of sorts.  
The mill in its final form was the proper balance of performance and durability; and with its camshaft so carefully selected, the engine's “personality” was perfectly matched to the work at hand.   It would produce adequate torque in the low RPM range to get whole rig moving quickly, yet deliver enough horsepower near and at red-line to pile on the MPH, fast.  No longer a polite-natured workhorse, this engine, this engine is impatient now.  High compression, a rapid, choppy idle - it seems to be biting at the bit to be released.  On command, it gulps its mixture and screams angrily, and often those standing around have a reflexive jump - the louder, the better - the more angry, the better.  If it hurts your ears, that’s a good feeling.  If its bark startles, that’s a good startle.  A cacophony?  No, the “music” of controlled explosions, capable of thrusting everything and everyone attached, forward, impolitely, on a rapid run to the freedom so well depicted in the ad.  

This is the addictive sound and feel that has appealed to a certain type of person since engines replaced horses, and why?  A surrogate voice for those who are otherwise quiet?  A visceral celebration of accomplishment?    Who cares.  Shift once, then again - speed quickly makes its appearance.  It appears as a loud, rushing wind and a visually striking, unnatural view of the surrounding scenery.  At some point, in the sane, it triggers a natural response - better slow down.    

He uncorked the headers, bought gasoline, dropped her in gear, tore off to the scene
Camaros and Mustangs, an old ‘55
Obediently lined-up, to get skinned alive!

Verse II (1st person)

I drove past the banner that said “Welcome race fans” took a new route, behind the grandstands
And through my chipped window, I thought I could see
Some of the racers were laughing at me

I guess rust and primer are not to their taste
But I put my bucks mister in the right place

I chugged/popped past cars that dealers had sold
Swung into a spot, next to something old

Emerging with interest from under his hood
My neighbor said two words, he said, “sounds good”

The Nova I parked next to was “classic rodding” in its outward appearance.  The much overused “primer paint job”.  The hood and front fenders a fiberglass clamshell, pinned affair.  Dice hanging from the mirror paid homage to days its driver never knew, but wished he had.  He removed them before he drove, always.

If you know how to peel the onion, secrets are revealed.  Wilwood brake calipers can be a dead giveaway. Someone needs serious stopping power - maybe.  Generally, owners who have sprung the bucks for this type gear let the calipers show off in bright red, to make a statement, and sometimes, these days, it’s just a fashion statement.  Expensive calipers, as eye candy, seem to be all the rage.  What is true, however, is very few guys spend big money on brakes only to render them inglorious and seemingly common with a shot of silver paint from a rattle can - and the owner of this half fiberglass racer that poses as a street car had done just that.  I'll glean two things from this observation. One, he needs those heavy brakes because he’s fast, and two, hiding them fits his style.  
Really, the message to be found in the silver paint, so cleverly applied to make your eyes simply slide across on their way to more interesting things, was “sleeper”.   And sleeper really means, he’s one of those guys with a score to settle - with everyone perhaps.   The list of “real parts” grew, if you knew where to look.  Looking was something I had unofficial permission to do since my rod was undergoing a similar scrutiny.  
“Stroked?”, I asked.  That’s something you can’t see from the outside. “ No”, my racer friend replied.  
“Hundred shot?”  (If engines have their language, so do the people who love them).   Despite the owner’s great efforts to conceal braided fuel and nitrous lines, electrical solenoids and switches, I spied his system.  The chunks of aluminum posing as ordinary spacers under his two Holly's were anything but.   “No”, was his one-word reply to my 100- shot question.  I tried again; “Your nitrous system is cleanly installed, how much are you spraying?”  “Two hundred fifty” in two stages, he said.  That’s more like it, I thought, and I then figured, he too had budgeted well for the machine shop – if not, he was gambling in a game that if lost, would soon fly parts in all directions.   Based on the overall neat work on display, I believed his build was up to the punishment planned. 
  I knew exactly what this tight-lipped guy was about, seeing someone very familiar in him as it were, and that made the “sounds good” complement I received upon my arrival all the more valuable.  I liked my neighbor.  And I liked the fact of our scratch-built rods having found each other - and I looked forward to us both dusting off the factory jobs.  It was going to be a good day.

The voice on the loudspeaker tells us we’re up.

Pre-staged, staged, then given the green
The line becomes blurred between man and machine

Bones become linkage
Muscle, spring
Fear, excitement

Time distorts ….
Color disappears …
Vision narrows…
Noise ---  becomes music
Speed, satisfaction

End

there are so many places to hide,

in my home at 17th and South screaming death threats at my roommates laughing diabolically playing  videogames and Jeopardy cooking quinoa stretching canvas the dog going mad frothing lunging  spastic to get the monkeys or the wookies or whatever random commandments we issue forth  drunken while Schlock rampages the backdrop,

at my uncle's row house on 22nd and Wallace with my shoes off freezing skipping class to watch March  Madness unwrapping waxpaper hoagies grimacing with each sip of Cherrywine or creamsicle  soda reading chapters at my leisure,

in the stacks among fiberglass and eternal florescent lima-tiled and echo-prone red-eyed and white-faced  caked with asbestos and headphones exhuming ossified pages from layers of cosmic dust  presiding benevolent,

in University City disguised in nothing but a name infiltrating Penn club soccer getting caught after  scoring yet still invited to the pure ***** joy of hell and heaven house parties of ice luge jungle  juice kegstand coke politic networking,

at Drexel's nightlit astroturf with the Jamaicans rolling blunts on the sidelines playing soccer floating in  slo-mo through billows of purple till the early morning or basketball at Penn against goggle- eyed professors in kneepads and copious sweat,

in the shadow tunnels behind Franklin Field always late night loner overlooking rust belt rails abandoned  to an absent tempo till tomorrow never looking behind me in the fear that someone is there,

at Phillies Stadium on glorious summer Tuesdays for dollar dog night laden with algebra geometry and  physics purposely forgetting to apply ballistics to the majestic arc of a home run or in the frozen  subway steam selling F.U. T.O. t-shirts to Eagles fans gnashing when the Cowboys come to town,

at 17th and Sansom in the morning bounding from Little Pete's scrambled eggs toast and black coffee  studying in the Spring thinking All is Full of Love in my ears leaving fog pollen footprints on the  smoking cement blooming,

at the Shambhala Center with dharma lotus dripping from heels soaking rosewater insides thrumming to the  groan of meditation,

at the Art Museum Greco-fleshed and ponderous counting tourists running the Rocky steps staring into shoji screen tatame teahouses,

at the Lebanese place plunked boldly in Reading Terminal Market buying hummus bumping past the Polish  and Irish on my way to the Amish with their wheelwagons packed with pretzels and honey and  chocolate and tea,

at the motheaten thrift store on North Broad buried under sad accumulations of ramshackle clothing  clowning ridiculous in the dim squinting at coathangers through magnifying glasses and mudflat  leather hoping to salvage something insane,

in the brown catacombed warrens of gutted Subterranea trying unsuccessfully to ignore bearded medicine

men adorned with shaman shell necklaces hawking incense bootlegs and broken Zippos halting conversation to listen pensive to the displacement of air after each train hurtles by,

at 30th Street Station cathedral sitting dwarfed by columns Herculean in their ascent and golden light  thunderclap whirligig wings on high circling the luminous waiting sprawled nascent on stringwood pews,

at the Masonic Temple next to City Hall, pretending to be a tourist all the while hoping scouring for clues in the cryptic grand architect apocrypha to expose global conspiracies,

at the Trocadero Electric Factory TLA Khyber Unitarian Church dungeon breaking my neck to basso  perfecto glitch kick drums with a giant's foot stampeding breakbeat holographic mind-boggled  hole-in-the-skull intonations,

at the Medusa Lounge Tritone Bob and Barbara's Silk City et cetera with a pitcher a pounder of Pabst and a  shot of Jim Beam glowing in the dark at the foosball table disco ball bopstepping to hip hop and  jazz and accordions and piano and vinyl,

in gray Fishtown at Gino's recording rap holding pizza debates on the ethics of sampling anything by  David Axelrod rattling tambourines and smiles at the Russian shopgirl downstairs still chained to  soul record crackles of antiquity spiraling from windows above,

at Sam Doom's on 12th and Spring Garden crafting friendship in greenhouse egg crate foam closets  breaking to scrutinize cinema and celebrate Thanksgiving blessed by holy chef Kronick,

in the company of Emily all over or in Kohn's Antiques salvaging for consanguinity and quirky heirlooms  discussing mortality and cancer and celestial funk chord blues as a cosmological constant and  communism and Cuba over mango brown rice plantains baking oatmeal chocolate chip cookies,

in a Coca Cola truck riding shotgun hot as hell hungover below the raging Kensington El at 6 AM nodding soft to the teamsters' curses the snagglesouled destitute crawling forth poisoned from sheet-metal shanty cardboard box projects this is not desolate,

at the impound lot yet again accusing tow trucks of false pretext paying up sheepish swearing I'll have my  revenge,

in the afterhour streets practicing trashcan kung fu and cinder block shotput shouting sauvage operatic at  tattooed bike messenger tribesmen pitstopped at the food trucks,

in the embrace of those I don't love the names sometimes rush at me drowned and I pray to myself for  asylum,

in the ciphers I host always at least 8 emcee lyric clerics summoning elemental until every pore ruptures  and their eyes erupt furious forever the profound voice of dreadlocked Will still haunting stray  bullet shuffles six years later,

in the caldera of Center City with everyone craning our skulls skyward past the stepped skyscrapers  beaming ear-to-ear welcoming acid sun rain melting maddeningly to reconstitute as concrete  rubber steel glass glowing nymphs,

in Philadelphia where every angle is accounted for and every megawatt careers into every throbbing wall where  Art is a mirror universe for every event ever volleyed through the neurons of History,

in Philadelphia of so many places to hide I am altogether as a funnel cloud frenetic roiling imbuing every corner sanctum sanctorum with jackhammer electromagnetism quivering current realizing stupefied I have failed so utterly wonderful human for in seeking to hide I have found

in Philadelphia

I remember the last time I went surfing.
I loved every second of it. I loved running out into the icy water, the chill taking a second to hit the vulnerable skin under my wetsuit. Those fleeting seconds of running ankle deep in the water before realizing how cold it is, and the moments following where I just kept running anyway, my body and board becoming dispersed in sea froth. I loved feeling my feet sink into the grainy sand as I gradually reach a depth that touches above my waist, then, bracing myself for the numbing cold, diving onto my board, immersing my top half in the crisp temperature the water holds. After the piercing cold is absorbed by my skin, and I am lying flat on smooth fiberglass, I see a wave forming in the distance. In a hurry, paddling madly, grazing my hands on the fiberglass sides of the board, desperate to get deep enough to catch the wave. I turn the board around and feel the wave coming behind me. This is the moment. The moment that feels like waiting for your plane to take off, or waiting for a raffle to be drawn, hoping desperately to hear your name called out. I feel the swell behind me, and continue paddling, facing the shore this time. I can feel it as a powerful but consistent surge brings the nose of my board up, and I hurry to lift myself up. I am crouching. My hands nervously let go of the sides. I am bent over. I am straightening. I am standing. My palms are flailing madly, but feel free in the warmer air. Within seconds, I lose my balance and the rush pulls me under. I fall off the board and take a mouthful of seawater. I emerge, laughing, trying to stabilize my focus and figure out whereabouts on the beach I am. As I drag the board back to shore, the salty sea water is already drying in my hair, fingernails and skin. I feel the familiar crunch of dry sand, and collapse, laughing, into the soft grains. I could do this again.

I was so excited to finally have my own surfboard. Brand new, I just hadn't had the chance to take it out yet. My brother asked to borrow it one day, and I couldn't see why not. He helped me attach the fins and leg rope, and I watched him walk away with my latest investment.

I was going into the garage to find something when I saw it there, in half, the fiberglass peeled towards the nose, the insides stuffed with sand, lying in a pile. The next day, my brother came home to find me waiting for him outside his room. "I have good and bad news! The bad news is, I broke your surfboard, the good news is, you now have two boogie boards!". I am sitting.

The cloud are reflecting off my computer screen
Moving at a rapid pace
They have somewhere to be
They have to move on
Fading into my shadow
They’re like daggers

My head is like daggers

And my smile is like a rifle
Loops one more time
Just picking the achy strings
I think he’s exhausted
Really just ******* tired
And the way he sings

Just wants to speak

And pour all of his heart
Thoughts
Emotions
Pain
Pain
Pain

These pitches, John, they aren’t real

They aren’t right
You aren’t right
I’m listening to this for you
Because last night was the night I took your life
I was tired too
I was tired and used your insecurities

As an excuse

To blow you off
Bryce come back please
I love you
I CAN’T SEE WHAT I’m typing anymore
It’s waterwashed
I love you I love you

I lov you please

Please trust me
My tears are ocean currents
My calves are the sand
Pull me to La Jolla please now
Hold my hand Bryce
You’ll be unconscience in 5 minutes

Fiberglass isn’t all that dependable

Fiberglass will float on
You’re heart is lead
Let it sink
Hold my hand
Let it sink
They’ll find our bodies

Eaten decayed by algae

You look just as fine with your
Skin pruned and ribcage exposed
I would kiss you all the same with your
Toes consumed by fishes
4 times over John
4 times you don’t sound anymore like an answer

I flipped through the pages,
taking in every word as scripture.
This is how my body will grow,
this is how to get a boy to like me,
this is who I’m supposed to turn into.

I was just a little girl.
I couldn’t have told you
my favorite color, I still don’t know
what I want to be when I grow up.

I just turned another page.
And I knew.

I had more fingers on my hands
than trips around the sun,
but even so young and so naive
my instincts were stronger
than fiberglass.

Something was wrong.

But I didn’t look like those pictures.
I didn’t hate myself.
I didn’t do it on purpose.
None of the words fit
to what I was feeling
but they were calling to me.

Screaming.

Juliana, you are us.
Juliana, you don’t have to eat that.
Juliana, something is wrong.

I was so young.

How did I know so young?
How did I only find out today?

Little Juliana,
what else did you know?

“It was so quiet, one of the killers would later say, you could almost hear the sound of ice rattling in cocktail shakers in the homes way down the canyon.”

William Garretson was the gardener of 10050 Cielo Drive, in Los Angeles, a summer house rented by Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate. He lived in the guest house on the property. On August 9th, 1969, members of the Manson family visited the residence and brutally murdered all the inhabitants, as well as Garretson’s friend Steve Parent. Garretson claims he had no knowledge of the murders that night. He is the only survivor of the Tate Murders.

your screams sounded
like fiberglass breaking
an almost impossible noise
like a hemorrhage at midnight
i was walking through the garden
and i swear
i heard the neat click
when he severed the phone line
if only i had known

i have thought up one hundred scenarios
in which i saved your life
but there is only one
when i don't
and every night i try to justify this reality
because i could have sworn
the sound of their boots
on the steel fence
was the telephone
ringing

when they saw the headlights
swerve over the lawn
steve was as good as dead
shattered like a lightbulb
under pressure
four shots pressed into his forehead
a candid bullet kissed him faceless
his absence was
a tell tale piquancy of slaughter
i lay in bed that night
and turned my face to the wall
when i heard the screams

tell me i reek coward
say the raw red skin of my knuckles
shaved away from the foundation of my raised veins
as i sat through another police interrogation
are nothing compared to the red poppy
that blossomed in the center of his chest
call me callous
but i will never forgive myself
for trimming the flowers
that sat innocent on the coffee table
in the middle of a mass grave
all i can say is
i was just the gardener

i found her
blooming on the living room floor
the baby cut
weeping from her umbilical cord
still attached to mother and father
by a rope traveling from neck to neck
thorny slices of fetal skin
peppering the carpet
blood sprays still wet
were soaking into the wooden door
sadism comes in many
limp limbed contortions
but only one color
and i saw *HIS smile
carved in the cavity
of her stomach
i swear to god
i wish i could say
i didn't see it coming

i found the severed tendons
of his fingers
suspended in the eerie light
of the swimming pool
pruned like overripe plums
the remnants of his face
scattered across the driveway
like taraxacum seeds
their bodies all
hanging like wilted stems
broken xylems hinged to sepals
by threads of sap
running down uprooted ligaments
there is not enough therapy in this world
to cure the silence in the garden
upon the aftermath of execution

the shapes of murders' footprints
left raised beds in my shoulder blades
manure smeared ***** across my lips
every flower i have ever planted since
has languished in the smell of your corpses
melded into the callouses
of my finger tips
i am just the gardener
and i am all broken anthers
petals shriveled, toxic
call me a survivor
but there is blood inside my filaments

At age 45 I decided to become a sailor.  It had attracted me since I first saw a man living on his sailboat at the 77th street boat basin in New York City, back in 1978.  I was leaving on a charter boat trip with customers up the Hudson to West Point, and the image of him having coffee on the back deck of his boat that morning stayed with me for years.  It was now 1994, and I had just bought a condo on the back bay of a South Jersey beach town — and it came with a boat slip.

I started my search for a boat by first reading every sailing magazine I could get my hands on.  This was frustrating because most of the boats they featured were ‘way’ out of my price range. I knew I wanted a boat that was 25’ to 27’ in length and something with a full cabin below deck so that I could sail some overnight’s with my wife and two kids.

I then started to attend boat shows.  The used boats at the shows were more in my price range, and I traveled from Norfolk to Mystic Seaport in search of the right one.  One day, while checking the classifieds in a local Jersey Shore newspaper, I saw a boat advertised that I just had to go see …

  For Sale: 27’ Cal Sloop. Circa 1966. One owner and used very
   gently.  Price $6,500.00 (negotiable)

This boat was now almost 30 years old, but I had heard good things about the Cal’s.  Cal was short for California. It was a boat originally manufactured on the west coast and the company was now out of business.  The brand had a real ‘cult’ following, and the boat had a reputation for being extremely sea worthy with a fixed keel, and it was noted for being good in very light air.  This boat drew over 60’’ of water, which meant that I would need at least five feet of depth (and really seven) to avoid running aground.  The bay behind my condo was full of low spots, especially at low tide, and most sailors had boats with retractable centerboards rather than fixed keels.  This allowed them to retract the boards (up) during low tide and sail in less than three feet of water. This wouldn’t be an option for me if I bought the Cal.

I was most interested in ‘blue water’ ocean sailing, so the stability of the fixed keel was very attractive to me.  I decided to travel thirty miles North to the New Jersey beach town of Mystic Island to look at the boat.  I arrived in front of a white bi-level house on a sunny Monday April afternoon at about 4:30. The letters on the mailbox said Murphy, with the ‘r’ & the ‘p’ being worn almost completely away due to the heavy salt air.

I walked to the front door and rang the buzzer.  An attractive blonde woman about ten years older than me answered the door. She asked: “Are you the one that called about the boat?”  I said that I was, and she then said that her husband would be home from work in about twenty minutes.  He worked for Resorts International Casino in Atlantic City as their head of maintenance, and he knew everything there was to know about the Cal. docked out back.  

Her name was Betty and as she offered me ice tea she started to talk about the boat.  “It was my husband’s best friend’s boat. Irv and his wife Dee Dee live next door but Irv dropped dead of a heart attack last fall.  My husband and Irv used to take the boat out through the Beach Haven Inlet into the ocean almost every night.  Irv bought the boat new back in 1967, and we moved into this house in 1968.  I can’t even begin to tell you how much fun the two of them had on that old boat.  It’s sat idle, ******* to the bulkhead since last fall, and Dee Dee couldn’t even begin to deal with selling it until her kids convinced her to move to Florida and live with them.  She offered it to my husband Ed but he said the boat would never be the same without Irv on board, and he’d rather see it go to a new owner.  Looking at it every day behind the house just brought back memories of Irv and made him sad all over again every time that he did.”

Just then Ed walked through the door leading from the garage into the house.  “Is this the new sailor I’ve been hearing about,” he said in a big friendly voice.  “That’s me I said,” as we shook hands.  ‘Give me a minute to change and I’ll be right with you.”

As Ed walked me back through the stone yard to the canal behind his house, I noticed something peculiar.  There was no dock at the end of his property.  The boat was tied directly to the sea wall itself with only three yellow and black ‘bumpers’ separating the fiberglass side of the boat from the bulkhead itself.  It was low tide now and the boats keel was sitting in at least two feet of sand and mud.  Ed explained to me that Irv used to have this small channel that they lived on, which was man made, dredged out every year.  Irv also had a dock, but it had even less water underneath it than the bulkhead behind Ed’s house.

Ed said again, “no dredging’s been done this year, and the only way to get the boat out of the small back tributary to the main artery of the bay, is to wait for high tide. The tide will bring the water level up at least six feet.  That will give the boat twenty-four inches of clearance at the bottom and allow you to take it out into the deeper (30 feet) water of the main channel.”

Ed jumped on the boat and said, “C’mon, let me show you the inside.”  As he took the padlock off the slides leading to the companionway, I noticed how motley and ***** everything was. My image of sailing was pristine boats glimmering in the sun with their main sails up and the captain and crew with drinks in their hands.  This was about as far away from that as you could get.  As Ed removed the slides, the smell hit me.  MOLD! The smell of mildew was everywhere, and I could only stay below deck for a moment or two before I had to come back up topside for air.  Ed said, “It’ll all dry out (the air) in about ten minutes, and then we can go forward and look at the V-Berth and the head in the front of the cabin.”

What had I gotten myself into, I thought?  This boat looked beyond salvageable, and I was now looking for excuses to leave. Ed then said, “Look; I know it seems bad, but it’s all cosmetic.  It’s really a fine boat, and if you’re willing to clean it up, it will look almost perfect when you’re done. Before Irv died, it was one of the best looking sailboats on the island.”

In ten more minutes we went back inside.  The damp air had been replaced with fresh air from outside, and I could now get a better look at the galley and salon.  The entire cabin was finished in a reddish brown, varnished wood, with nice trim work along the edges.  It had two single sofas in the main salon that converted into beds at night, with a stainless-steel sink, refrigerator and nice carpeting and curtains.  We then went forward.  The head was about 40’’ by 40’’ and finished in the same wood as the outer cabin.  The toilet, sink, and hand-held shower looked fine, and Ed assured me that as soon as we filled up the water tank, they would all work.

The best part for me though was the v-berth beyond.  It was behind a sold wood varnished door with a beautiful brass grab-rail that helped it open and close. It was large, with a sleeping area that would easily accommodate two people. That, combined with the other two sleeping berths in the main salon, meant that my entire family could spend the night on the boat. I was starting to get really interested!

Ed then said that Irv’s wife Dee Dee was as interested in the boat going to a good home as she was in making any money off the boat.  We walked back up to the cockpit area and sat down across from each other on each side of the tiller.  Ed said, “what do you think?” I admitted to Ed that I didn’t know much about sailboats, and that this would be my first.  He told me it was Irv’s first boat too, and he loved it so much that he never looked at another.

                   Ed Was A Pretty Good Salesman

We then walked back inside the house.  Betty had prepared chicken salad sandwiches, and we all sat out on the back deck to eat.  From here you could see the boat clearly, and its thirty-five-foot mast was now silhouetted in front of the sun that was setting behind the marsh.  It was a very pretty scene indeed.

Ed said,”Dee Dee has left it up to me to sell the boat.  I’m willing to be reasonable if you say you really want it.”  I looked out at what was once a white sailboat, covered in mold and sitting in the mud.  No matter how hard the wind blew, and there was a strong offshore breeze, it was not moving an inch.  I then said to Ed, “would it be possible to come back when the tide is up and you can take me out?”  Ed said he would be glad to, and Saturday around 2:00 p.m. would be a good time to come back. The tide would be up then.  I also asked him if between now and Saturday I could try and clean the boat up a little? This would allow me to really see what I would be buying, and at the very least we’d have a cleaner boat to take out on the water.  Ed said fine.

I spent the next four days cleaning the boat. Armed with four gallons of bleach, rubber gloves, a mask, and more rags than I could count, I started to remove the mold.  It took all week to get the boat free of the mildew and back to being white again. The cushions inside the v-berth and salon were so infested with mold that I threw them up on the stones covering Ed’s back yard. I then asked Ed if he wanted to throw them out — he said that he did.

Saturday came, and Betty had said, “make sure to get here in time for lunch.”  At 11:45 a.m. I pulled up in front of the house.  By this time, we knew each other so well that Betty just yelled down through the screen door, “Let yourself in, Ed’s down by the boat fiddling with the motor.”  The only good thing that had been done since Irv passed away last fall was that Ed had removed the motor from the boat. It was a long shaft Johnson 9.9 horsepower outboard, and he had stored it in his garage.  The motor was over twelve years old, but Ed said that Irv had taken really good care of it and that it ran great.  It was also a long shaft, which meant that the propeller was deep in the water behind the keel and would give the boat more propulsion than a regular shaft outboard would.

I yelled ‘hello’ to Ed from the deck outside the kitchen.  He shouted back, “Get down here, I want you to hear this.”  I ran down the stairs and out the back door across the stones to where Ed was sitting on the boat.  He had the twist throttle in his hand, and he was revving the motor. Just like he had said —it sounded great. Being a lifelong motorcycle and sports car enthusiast, I knew what a strong motor sounded like, and this one sounded just great to me.

“Take the throttle, Ed said,” as I jumped on board.  I revved the motor half a dozen times and then almost fell over.  The boat had just moved about twenty degrees to the starboard (right) side in the strong wind and for the first time was floating freely in the canal.  Now I really felt like I was on a boat.  Ed said, “Are you hungry, or do you wanna go sailing?”  Hoping that it wouldn’t offend Betty I said, “Let’s head out now into the deeper water.” Ed said that Betty would be just fine, and that we could eat when we got back.

As I untied the bow and stern lines, I could tell right away that Ed knew what he was doing.  After traveling less than 100 yards to the main channel leading to the bay, he put the mainsail up and we sailed from that point on.  It was two miles out to the ocean, and he skillfully maneuvered the boat, using nothing but the tiller and mainsheet.  The mainsheet is the block and pulley that is attached from the deck of the cockpit to the boom.  It allows the boom to go out and come back, which controls the speed of the boat. The tiller then allows you to change direction.  With the mainsheet in one hand and the tiller in the other, the magic of sailing was hard to describe.

I was mesmerized watching Ed work the tiller and mainsheet in perfect harmony. The outboard was now tilted back up in the cockpit and out of the water.  “For many years before he bought the motor, Irv and I would take her out, and bring her back in with nothing but the sail, One summer we had very little wind, and Irv and I got stuck out in the ocean. Twice we had to be towed back in by ‘Sea Tow.’  After that Irv broke down and bought the long-shaft Johnson.”

In about thirty minutes we passed through the ‘Great Bay,’ then the Little Egg and Beach Haven Inlets, until we were finally in the ocean.  “Only about 3016 miles straight out there, due East, and you’ll be in London,” Ed said.”  Then it hit me.  From where we were now, I could sail anywhere in the world, with nothing to stop me except my lack of experience. Experience I told myself, was something that I would quickly get. Knowing the exact mileage, said to me that both Ed and Irv had thought about that trip, and maybe had fantasized about doing it together.

    With The Tenuousness Of Life, You Never Know How Much      Time You Have

For two more hours we sailed up and down the coast in front of Long Beach Island.  I could hardly sit down in the cockpit as Ed let me do most of the sailing.  It took only thirty minutes to get the hang of using the mainsheet and tiller, and after an hour I felt like I had been sailing all my life.  Then we both heard a voice come over the radio.  Ed’s wife Betty was on channel 27 of the VHF asking if we were OK and that lunch was still there but the sandwiches were getting soggy.  Ed said we were headed back because the tide had started to go out, and we needed to be back and ******* in less than ninety minutes or we would run aground in the canal.

I sailed us back through the inlets which thankfully were calm that day and back into the main channel leading out of the bay.  Ed then took it from there.  He skillfully brought us up the rest of the channel and into the canal, and in a fairly stiff wind spun the boat 180’ around and gently slid it back into position along the sea wall behind his house.  I had all 3 fenders out and quickly jumped off the boat and up on top of the bulkhead to tie off the stern line once we were safely alongside.  I then tied off the bow-line as Ed said, “Not too tight, you have to allow for the 6-8 feet of tide that we get here every day.”

After bringing down the mainsail, and folding and zippering it safely to the boom, we locked the companionway and headed for the house.  Betty was smoking a cigarette on the back deck and said, “So how did it go boys?” Without saying a word Ed looked directly at me and for one of the few times in my life, I didn’t really know where to begin.

“My God,” I said.  “My God.”  “I’ll take that as good Betty said, as she brought the sandwiches back out from the kitchen.  “You can powerboat your whole life, but sailing is different” Ed told me.  “When sailing, you have to work with the weather and not just try to power through it.  The weather tells you everything.  In these parts, when a storm kicks up you see two sure things happen.  The powerboats are all coming in, and the sailboat’s are all headed out.  What is dangerous and unpleasant for the one, is just what the other hopes for.”

I had been a surfer as a kid and understood the logic.  When the waves got so big on the beach that the lifeguard’s closed it to swimming during a storm, the surfers all headed out.  This would not be the only similarity I would find between surfing and sailing as my odyssey continued.  I finished my lunch quickly because all I wanted to do was get back on the boat.

When I returned to the bulkhead the keel had already touched bottom and the boat was again fixed and rigidly upright in the shallow water.  I spent the afternoon on the back of the boat, and even though I knew it was bad luck, in my mind I changed her name.  She would now be called the ‘Trinity,’ because of the three who would now sail her —my daughter Melissa, my son T.C. and I.  I also thought that any protection I might get from the almighty because of the name couldn’t hurt a new sailor with still so much to learn.

                                  Trinity, It Was!

I now knew I was going to buy the boat.  I went back inside and Ed was fooling around with some fishing tackle inside his garage.  “OK Ed, how much can I buy her for?” I said.  Ed looked at me squarely and said, “You tell me what you think is fair.”  “Five thousand I said,” and without even looking up Ed said “SOLD!” I wrote the check out to Irv’s wife on the spot, and in that instant it became real. I was now a boat owner, and a future deep-water sailor.  The Atlantic Ocean had better watch out, because the Captain and crew of the Trinity were headed her way.

                 SOLD, In An Instant, It Became Real!

I couldn’t wait to get home and tell the kids the news.  They hadn’t seen much of me for the last week, and they both wanted to run right back and take the boat out.  I told them we could do it tomorrow (Sunday) and called Ed to ask him if he’d accompany us one more time on a trip out through the bay.  He said gladly, and to get to his house by 3:00 p.m. tomorrow to ‘play the tide.’  The kids could hardly sleep as they fired one question after another at me about the boat. More than anything, they wanted to know how we would get it the 45 miles from where it was docked to the boat slip behind our condo in Stone Harbor.  At dinner that night at our favorite Italian restaurant, they were already talking about the boat like it was theirs.

The next morning, they were both up at dawn, and by 8:30 we were on our way North to Mystic Island.  We had decided to stop at a marine supply store and buy a laundry list of things that mariners need ‘just in case’ aboard a boat.  At 11:15 a.m. we pulled out of the parking lot of Boaters World in Somers Point, New Jersey, and headed for Ed and Betty’s. They were both sitting in lawn chairs when we got there and surprised to see us so early.  ‘The tide’s not up for another 3 hours,” Ed said, as we walked up the drive.  I told him we knew that, but the kids wanted to spend a couple of hours on the boat before we headed out into the bay.  “Glad to have you kids,” Ed said, as he went back to reading his paper.  Betty told us that anything that we might need, other than what we just bought, is most likely in the garage.

Ed, being a professional maintenance engineer (what Betty called him), had a garage that any handyman would die for.  I’m sure we could have built an entire house on the empty lot across the street just from what Ed had hanging, and piled up, in his garage.

We walked around the side of the house and when the kids got their first look at the boat, they bolted for what they thought was a dock.  When they saw it was raw bulkhead, they looked back at me unsure of what to do.  I said, ‘jump aboard,” but be careful not to fall in, smiling to myself and knowing that the water was still less than four feet deep.  With that, my 8-year old son took a flying leap and landed dead center in the middle of the cockpit — a true sailor for sure.  My daughter then pulled the bow line tight bringing the boat closer to the sea wall and gingerly stepped on board like she had done it a thousand times before. Watching them board the boat for the first time, I knew this was the start of something really good.

Ed had already unlocked the companionway, so I stayed on dry land and just watched them for a half-hour as they explored every inch of the boat from bow to stern. “You really did a great job Dad cleaning her up.  Can we start the motor, my son asked?” I told him as soon as the tide came up another foot, we would drop the motor down into the water, and he could listen to it run.  So far this was everything I could have hoped for.  My kids loved the boat as much as I did.  I had had the local marine artist come by after I left the day before and paint the name ‘Trinity’ across the outside transom on the back of the boat. Now this boat was really ours. It’s hard to explain the thrill of finally owning your first boat. To those who can remember their first Christmas when they finally got what they had been hoping for all year —the feeling was the same.

                            It Was Finally Ours

In another hour, Ed came out. We fired up the motor with my son in charge, unzipped the mainsail, untied the lines, and we were headed back out to sea.  I’m not sure what was wider that day, the blue water vista straight in front of us or the eyes of my children as the boat bit into the wind. It was keeled over to port and carved through the choppy waters of ‘The Great Bay’ like it was finally home. For the first time in a long time the kids were speechless.  They let the wind do the talking, as the channel opened wide in front of them.

Ed let both kids take a turn at the helm. They were also amazed at how much their father had learned in the short time he had been sailing.  We stayed out for a full three hours, and then Betty again called on the VHF. “Coast Guards calling for a squall, with small craft warnings from five o’clock on.  For safety’s sake, you guy’s better head back for the dock.”  Ed and I smiled at each other, each knowing what the other was secretly thinking.  If the kids hadn’t been on board, this would have been a really fun time to ride out the storm.  Discretion though, won out over valor, and we headed West back through the bay and into the canal. Once again, Ed spun the boat around and nudged it into the sea wall like the master that he was.  This time my son was in charge of grabbing and tying off the lines, and he did it in a fashion that would make any father proud.

As we tidied up the boat, Ed said, “So when are you gonna take her South?”  “Next weekend, I said.” My business partner, who lives on his 42’ Egg Harbor in Cape May all summer and his oldest son are going to help us.  His oldest son Tony had worked on an 82’ sightseeing sailboat in Fort Lauderdale for two years, and his dad said there was little about sailing that he didn’t know.  That following Saturday couldn’t come fast enough/

                          We Counted The Minutes

The week blew by (literally), as the weather deteriorated with each day.  Saturday morning came, and the only good news (to me) was that my daughter had a gymnastic’s meet and couldn’t make the maiden voyage. The crew would be all men —my partner Tommy, his son Tony, and my son T.C. and I. We checked the tides, and it was decided that 9:30 a.m. was the perfect time to start South with the Trinity.  We left for Ed and Betty’s at 7:00 a.m. and after stopping at ‘Polly’s’ in Stone Harbor for breakfast we arrived at the boat at exactly 8:45.  It was already floating freely in the narrow canal. Not having Ed’s skill level, we decided to ‘motor’ off the bulkhead, and not put the sails up until we reached the main bay.  With a kiss to Betty and a hug from Ed, we broke a bottle of ‘Castellane Brut’ on the bulkhead and headed out of the canal.

Once in the main bay we noticed something we hadn’t seen before. We couldn’t see at all!  The buoy markers were scarcely visibly that lined both sides of the channel. We decided to go South ‘inside,’ through the Intercoastal Waterway instead of sailing outside (ocean) to Townsends Inlet where we initially decided to come in.  This meant that we would have to request at least 15 bridge openings on our way south.  This was a tricky enough procedure in a powerboat, but in a sailboat it could be a disaster in the making.  The Intercoastal Waterway was the back-bay route from Maine to Florida and offered protection that the open ocean would not guarantee. It had the mainland to its West and the barrier island you were passing to its East.  If it weren’t for the number of causeway bridges along its route, it would have been the perfect sail.

When you signaled to the bridge tender with your air horn, requesting an opening, it could sometimes take 10 or 15 minutes for him to get traffic stopped on the bridge before he could then open it up and let you through.  On Saturdays, it was worse. In three cases we waited and circled for twenty minutes before being given clear passage through the bridge.  Sailboats have the right of way over powerboats but only when they’re under sail. We had decided to take the sails down to make the boat easier to control.  By using the outboard we were just like any other powerboat waiting to get through, and often had to bob and weave around the waiting ‘stinkpots’ (powerboats) until the passage under the bridge was clear.  The mast on the Trinity was higher than even the tallest bridge, so we had to stop and signal to each one requesting an opening as we traveled slowly South.

All went reasonably well until we arrived at the main bridge entering Atlantic City. The rebuilt casino skyline hovered above the bridge like a looming monster in the fog.  This was also the bridge with the most traffic coming into town with weekend gamblers risking their mortgage money to try and break the bank.  The wind had now increased to over 30 knots.  This made staying in the same place in the water impossible. We desperately criss-crossed from side to side in the canal trying to stay in position for when the bridge opened. Larger boats blew their horns at us, as we drifted back and forth in the channel looking like a crew of drunks on New Year’s Eve.  Powerboats are able to maintain their position because they have large motors with a strong reverse gear.  Our little 9.9 Johnson did have reverse, but it didn’t have nearly enough power to back us up against the tide.

On our third pass zig-zagging across the channel and waiting for the bridge to open, it happened.  Instead of hearing the bell from the bridge tender signaling ‘all clear,’ we heard a loud “SNAP.’ Tony was at the helm, and from the front of the boat where I was standing lookout I heard him shout “OH S#!T.”  The wooden tiller had just broken off in his hand.

                                         SNAP!

Tony was sitting down at the helm with over three feet of broken tiller in his left hand.  The part that still remained and was connected to the rudder was less than 12 inches long.  Tony tried with all of his might to steer the boat with the little of the tiller that was still left, but it was impossible in the strong wind.  He then tried to steer the boat by turning the outboard both left and right and gunning the motor.  This only made a small correction, and we were now headed back across the Intercoastal Waterway with the wind behind us at over thirty knots.  We were also on a collision course with the bridge.  The only question was where we would hit it, not when! We hoped and prayed it would be as far to the Eastern (Atlantic City) side as possible.  This would be away from the long line of boats that were patiently lined up and waiting for the bridge to open.

Everything on the boat now took on a different air.  Tony was screaming that he couldn’t steer, and my son came up from down below where he was staying out of the rain. With one look he knew we were in deep trouble.  It was then that my priorities completely shifted from the safety of my new (old) boat to the safety of my son and the rest of those onboard.  My partner Tommy got on the radio’s public channel and warned everyone in the area that we were out of control.  Several power boaters tried to throw us a line, but in the strong wind they couldn’t get close enough to do it safely.

We were now less than 100 feet from the bridge.  It looked like we would hit about seven pylons left of dead center in the middle of the bridge on the North side.  As we braced for impact, a small 16 ft Sea Ray with an elderly couple came close and tried to take my son off the boat.  Unfortunately, they got too close and the swirling current around the bridge piers ****** them in, and they also hit the bridge about thirty feet to our left. Thank God, they did have enough power to ‘motor’ off the twenty-foot high pier they had hit but not without doing cosmetic damage to the starboard side of their beautiful little boat. I felt terrible about this and yelled ‘THANK YOU’ across the wind and the rushing water.  They waved back, as they headed North against the tide, back up the canal.

      The Kindness Of Strangers Continues To Amaze Me!

BANG !!!  That’s the sound the boat made when it hit the bridge.  We were now sideways in the current, and the first thing to hit was not the mast but the starboard side ‘stay’ that holds the mast up.  Stays are made of very thick wire, and even though the impact was at over ten knots, the stay held secure and did not break.  We were now pinned against the North side of the bridge, with the current swirling by us, and the boat being pulled slowly through the opening between the piers.  The current was pulling the boat and forcing it to lean over with the mast pointing North. If it continued to do this, we would finally broach (turn over) and all be in the water and floating South toward the beach towns of Margate and Ventnor.  The width between the piers was over thirty feet, so there was plenty of room to **** us in and then down, as the water had now assumed command.

It was at this moment that I tied my Son to myself.  He was a good swimmer and had been on our local swim team for the past three summers, but this was no pool.  There were stories every summer of boaters who got into trouble and had to go in the water, and many times someone drowned or was never found or seen again.  The mast was now leaned over and rubbing against the inside of the bridge.  

The noise it made moving back and forth was louder than even the strong wind.  Over the noise from the mast I heard Tommy shout, “Kurt, the stay is cutting through the insulation on the main wire that is the power source to the bridge. If it gets all the way through to the inside, the whole boat will be electrified, and we’ll go up like a roman candle.”  I reluctantly looked up and he was right.  The stay looked like it was more than half-way through the heavy rubber insulation that was wrapped around the enormous cable that ran horizontally inside and under the entire span of the bridge.  I told Tommy to get on the VHF and alert the Coast Guard to what was happening.  I also considered jumping overboard with my son in my arms and tied to me hoping that someone would then pull us out of the water if we made it through the piers. I couldn’t leave though, because my partner couldn’t swim.

Even though Tommy had been a life-long boater, he had never learned to swim.  He grew up not far from the banks of the Mississippi River in Hardin Illinois and still hadn’t learned.  I couldn’t just leave him on the boat. We continued to stay trapped in between the piers as the metal wire stay worked its way back and forth across the insulated casing above.

In another fifteen minutes, two Coast Guard crews showed up in gigantic rubber boats.  Both had command towers up high and a crew of at least 8 on board.  They tried to get close enough to throw us a line but each time failed and had to motor away against the tide at full throttle to miss the bridge.  The wake from their huge twin outboards forced us even further under the bridge, and the port side rail of the Trinity was now less than a foot above the water line.

              Why Had I Changed The Name Of This Boat?

The I heard it again, BAMMM !  I looked up and saw nothing.  It all looked like it had before.  The Coast Guard boat closest to us came across on the bullhorn. “Don’t touch anything metal, you’ve cut through the insulation and are now in contact with the power source.  The boat is electrified, but if you stay still, the fiberglass and water will act as a buffer and insulation.  We can’t even touch or get near you now until the power gets turned off to the bridge.”  

We all stood in the middle of the cockpit as far away from anything metal as possible.  I reached into the left storage locker where the two plastic gas containers were and tightened the filler caps. I then threw both of them overboard.  They both floated harmlessly through the bridge where a third Coast Guard boat now retrieved them about 100 yards further down the bay.  At least now I wouldn’t have to worry about the two fifteen-gallon gas cans exploding if the electrical current ever got that far.

For a long twenty minutes we sat there huddled together as the Coast Guard kept yelling at us not to touch anything at all.  Just as I thought the boat was going under, everything seemed to go dark.  Even though it was early afternoon, the fog was so heavy that the lights on the bridge had been turned on.  Now in an instant, they were off.

                               All Lights Were Off

I saw the first Coast Guard boat turn around and then try to slowly drift our way backward. They were going to try and get us out from between the piers before we sank.  Three times they tried and three times again they failed.  Finally, two men in a large cigarette boat came flying at us. With those huge motors keeping them off the bridge, they took everyone off the Trinity, while giving me two lines to tie to both the bow and the stern. They then pulled up alongside the first large inflatable and handed the two lines to the Coast Guard crew.  After that, they backed off into the center of the channel to see what the Coast Guard would do next.

The second Coast Guard boat was now positioned beside the first with its back also facing the bridge.  They each had one of the lines tied to my boat now secured to cleats on their rear decks.  Slowly they motored forward as the Trinity emerged from its tomb inside the piers.  In less than fifteen seconds, the thirty-year boat old was free of the bridge.  With that, the Coast Guard boat holding the stern line let go and the sailboat turned around with the bow now facing the back of the first inflatable. The Captain continued to tow her until she was alongside the ‘Sea Tow’ service vessel that I hadn’t noticed until now.  The Captain on the Sea Tow rig said that he would tow the boat into Somers Point Marina.  That was the closest place he knew of that could make any sailboat repairs.

We thanked the owners of the cigarette boat and found out that they were both ex-navy seals.  ‘If they don’t die hard, some never die at all,’ and thank God for our nation’s true warriors. They dropped us off on Coast Guard Boat #1, and after spending about 10 minutes with the crew, the Captain asked me to come up on the bridge.  He had a mound of papers for me to fill out and then asked me if everyone was OK. “A little shook up,’” I said, “but we’re all basically alright.” I then asked this ‘weekend warrior’ if he had ever seen the movie ‘Top Gun.’  With his chest pushed out proudly he said that he had, and that it was one of his all-time favorites.

            ‘If They Don’t Die hard, Some Never Die At All’

I reminded him of the scene when the Coast Guard rescue team dropped into the rough waters of the Pacific to retrieve ‘Goose,’ who had just hit the canopy of his jet as he was trying to eject.  With his chest still pumped out, he said again proudly that he did. “Well, I guess that only happens in the movies, right Captain,” I said, as he turned back to his paperwork and looked away.

His crew had already told me down below that they wanted to approach the bridge broadside and take us off an hour ago but that the Captain had said no, it was too dangerous!  They also said that after his tour was over in 3 more months, no one would ever sail with him again.  He was the only one on-board without any real active-duty service, and he always shied away from doing the right thing when the weather was rough.  He had refused to go just three more miles last winter to rescue two fishermen off a sinking trawler forty miles offshore.  Both men died because he had said that the weather was just “too rough.”

                     ‘A True Weekend Only Warrior’

We all sat with the crew down below as they entertained my son and gave us hot coffee and offered medical help if needed.  Thankfully, we were all fine, but the coffee never tasted so good.  As we pulled into the marina in Somers Point, the Trinity was already there and tied to the service dock.  After all she had been through, she didn’t look any the worse for wear.  It was just then that I realized that I still hadn’t called my wife.  I could have called from the Coast Guard boat, but in the commotion of the moment, I had totally forgotten.

When I got through to her on the Marina’s pay phone, she said,  “Oh Dear God, we’ve been watching you on the news. Do you know you had the power turned off to all of Atlantic City for over an hour?”  After hanging up, I thought to myself —"I wonder what our little excursion must have cost the casino’s,” but then I thought that they probably had back up generation for something just like this, but then again —maybe not.

I asked my wife to come pick us up and noticed that my son was already down at the service dock and sitting on the back of his ‘new’ sailboat.  He said, “Dad, do you think she’ll be alright?” and I said to him, “Son, she’ll be even better than that. If she could go through what happened today and remain above water, she can go through anything — and so can you.  I’m really proud of the way you handled yourself today.”

My Son is now almost thirty years old, and we talk about that day often. The memory of hitting the bridge and surviving is something we will forever share.  As a family, we continued to sail the Trinity for many years until our interests moved to Wyoming.  We then placed the Trinity in the capable hands of our neighbor Bobby, next door, who sails her to this day.

All through those years though, and especially during the Stone Harbor Regatta over the Fourth of July weekend, there was no mistaking our crew when you saw us coming through your back basin in the ‘Parade of Ships.’  Everyone aboard was dressed in a red polo shirt, and if you happened to look at any of us from behind, you would have seen …

                               ‘The Crew Of The Trinity’  
                         FULL CONTACT SAILING ONLY!

Fading Sun...

I was looking at the graying sky.
Trying to chase a fading sun
I peeped above the pointed leaves of the Yucca tree
My eyes were met by little bursts of orange stars
And oblique sunbeams... emitting fading brightness
Through the bushy leaves of the Sampaguita plant.

I was waiting for the moths to appear
Near my lighted candle,
But a gusty wind blew, and made the shell chimes
Sway back and forth...left and right
Round their base and through,
Until all five chimes made pleasant music
With the cool, whirring wind.

I was waiting for the late afternoon sky
To turn to elephant gray
To highlight the yellow glow from the street lamp
So I could test some newly hung Christmas lights
And the capiz lantern outside the french windows
But the rainshowers came all at once
And i found myself wet, from the pouring rain.

I was waiting...and saw a changing sky
The rain, just tip-tapping on the roof
A much cooler air blowing...
Bringing sprays of mist on my face...
Suddenly emerging...the shape of a bat or two,
Flying, crashing, through the dripping red palm tree.

On the horizon, sun was now a dipping balloon
If there's any, i would wait for any kind of moon.

On the garden chair, i sat
And just above me, came a regular stray cat
I heard its paws lightly scratching
The wet surface of the fiberglass roofing.

I still wait...and contemplate on hopes and prayers
I wait...for a lot of dreams to come true
i wait, for this long day to be over
While the night creatures,
In their own tones and tunes
Have started to croon...

Sally


Copyright October 16, 2015
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan

however i choose
to abuse these loose reigns
to gain whatever gallops may overtake
to overrun the rampant jade
in summer's plum, my teeth in no shade
but the plump flesh
of a ****** day; brightly at heel
of my toes, bejeweled
in ocean spray
fresh cut lawns with diamond dew, disarranged
sprinkler cast before midday
to cheat the sun,  a sip or two -
and slake the thirst
of emeralds
i would soon delight
to cantor through.
to roam
with eyes too wide
to choose
a culdesac ... to dread-
or view. Perhaps
a glance at crates
and crude cadavers of a life
removed -
from every thing i worship twice !
while prancing, ever-prancing -
through
the manicure
that has ' no cure '
for Nature's way
of tending too the over-groped
and fussy plucked,
some Charter barks
you have to do; What Art dispels
what man has framed ?
what power drapes
the Land more true ? A dozen Elves ?
Prayer in school ?
what genius
never fails to ask -
the question that reveals the fruit ?
or listens .... to the loamy grass ?

a very
few, if any who -
would
do
the same; the
mortgage and a
landscape, paid;
' in-full.'  [ The first ]

with love, the glade ?

The Earth
is all i know,
would do
for nothing,
all...  Spite all -
we do.
however we blockade
or stake
the acreage
we have papers prove-
belong to every
dispossessed
with keys to doors
that lead to
rooms -
that seldom have the sun
inside the red Redwood
the old thing died
too raise your roof
under god's blue
sky.

To shelter
men from other
men,
who covet what
you keep in
them.

a 1000 yrs of Life, undone  
to build our vapid
ornaments.
a forgery
of hearths; and hardly worth
the vasty parlors
lost.

we parcel, carve
and auction
off
our petty Lots of
*******...

the empty ones we polish
while our homeless
remain home-
less

the echoes of a simpler time
too weak to even haunt them.

our shame intact, we slash
and burn, for coffers have
no conscience.

our charity is scarcely more than earplugs
for a blindness; a band-aid for an Apathy
a thimble and
a wine list
etched inside the hollow
just below the milk of kindness
that soured
in a palsy hand
that brought a drop
and spilled it.


However
I have chosen more
than fiberglass and
fountains
my habit is to wander off
the beaten path
to mountains.
To slopes
of avid avalanche
and quiet shouts
of Silence -
that echo and return
as if to soothe
my withers'
finally...

an
ache
to meadowlark and leap
for leagues without a harness
without
a gate to keep
the lush pavilions
at a distance

nothing
to contain
the gift
and no one
there to
name
it.

nothing but the wind to kiss
and no books to
explain
it.

she spoke to me, on the daffodil sweetness of the pasture
while the grasses, waving, muttered their moist message on the wind
of rot, and renewal,
(but hold your lips, be still for an explosion of intimacy, for a moment)

'Are those a constellation?' she asks.
"The Pleiades."
'You don't know that.'

she doesn't care where the car begins, exhaling gently, to stop
and she commends its forward motion
(the keening love of a sodium light
and forgetfulness in every bone of my body)
I love the thrum of it, below my feet,
murmuring vibrato in the pedals.

They have a Huck Finn cave display at Disneyworld. In Adventure Island, or somewhere, or one of us, deep in the vastness of spines and fingers.

Its fiberglass walls are a portrait of America -
the glean of dew a reflection of that spirit
that drove us over the borders, the rivers, to Oregon,
so we could love under a naked moon,
and renounce our lives of glee, and security
for the bright unsettled plantation of the starless fields.

'You don't know a constellation from a cloud of dandelion seeds.'

But oh, my relentless pioneer love, I do - I know a constellation
is made of stars, and rough determination, and I know that,
love is a today thing, and we are yesterday people
that pain is tomorrow, and we will always be children of the dusk preceding
destined, dear, to find our love receding

Are you prepared, or will the wilderness this time swallow you?

dearest moenhead,
i am so deeply relieved that you are here for me
when I walk in the door
silently waiting to comfort me after a long day.
I look up at your beautiful head,
yes, I have neglected you~ there is rust collecting in your pores,
and tears welling up in your sparkling grey eyes
I wonder how long you have been going on like this?
Oh come now. Don't be cold. I'm home!
We can be together, right?
I turn up the heat
no wasting time
I turn you on, warm you up,
and step into your powerful flow of pure joy...
You shower me with kindness, gently massaging
away my every ache,
all the day's tension down the drain
oh you are the best~
under your washful forgiving eyes,
freed from from the distraction of self awareness,
lost in the luxury of suds and pelting pleasure,
i seem to melt into the cheap fiberglass casing.
but you...
you transform ordinary water into liquid gold and
make this place feel more like a resort
taking me away to places no Calgon bath could ever dream of
oh showerhead,
I can barely stand to be out from under your steaming streams~
your warming current of comfort
washing all the days crud off of me
making me feel clean, energized, vibrant and youthful again
ready to face the world or my dreams.
Showerhead,
sediment notwithstanding,
I am happiest when I am with you.
I am a better person.
you make me feel alive again,
and though I have tried to articulate this into meaningful words,
words are unable to express my gratitude, for alas,
you can never know what you mean to me.
Just know that you are the most wonderful and awesome shower i have ever had,
there is none like you.
from the bottom of my sole,
thank you. All my love,
Geegirl

My Heart Was Saying One Thing, My Mind Another ...

Some things you just know — like the feeling I get when looking at my children or the way I felt the first time I looked into the Grand Canyon. Some experiences are too strong for reason or words. There are some things, that even though they defy all conventional wisdom in your heart and your mind — you just know.

Never dying on a motorcycle is one of those things. I can’t explain it rationally, it’s just something that I’ve always known. It’s a feeling that has been deep inside of me since I first threw my right leg over the seat of that old powder blue moped. I knew I was never going to die as the result of a motorcycle crash. In many ways, I feel safest when I’m back on two-wheels and headed for points previously unknown.

Lately Though, I’ve Been Made To Feel Differently

I now had my daughter on the back of the bike with me. I’ve started to wonder whether my premonition covers just me, or does it also protect all who ride as co-pilot and passenger? Would the same Gods of 2-wheeled travel, who have watched over me for so long, also extend their protection to those I love and now share my adventures with?

Our flight from Philadelphia had arrived in Idaho Falls five days ago. We hurried to the dealership, picked up our beloved Yamaha Venture Royale, and then began our quest of another ten-day odyssey through the Rocky Mountain West. This was Melissa’s third tour with her dad, and we both shared the intense excitement of not knowing what the next week would hold. We had no specific destination or itinerary. This week would be more important than that. Just by casting our fate into the winds that blew across the eastern slopes of the great Rocky Mountains, we knew that all destinations would then be secure.

Then We Almost Hit Our First Deer

Three days ago, just South of Dupoyer Montana, two doe’s and a fawn appeared out of nowhere on the road directly in front of us. Melissa never saw them as I grabbed ******* the front brake. The front brake provides 80-90% of all stopping power on a motorcycle but also causes the greatest loss of control if you freeze up the front wheel. As the front wheel locked, the bike’s back tire swerved right and we moved violently into the left oncoming lane just narrowly missing the three deer.

They Never Moved

The old axiom that goes … Head right for the deer, because they won’t be there when you get there, wouldn’t have worked today. They just watched us go by as if it happened to them every day. Judging by the number of dead deer we had seen along highway #89 coming South, it probably did.

Strike One!

We pulled into Great Falls for the night and over dinner relived again how close we had actually come — so close to it all being over. Collisions with deer are tragic enough in a car or SUV, but on a motorcycle usually only one of the unfortunate participants gets up and walks away — and that’s almost always the deer. The rider is normally a statistic. We thanked the Gods of the highway for protecting us this day, and after a short walk around town we went back to the motel for a good (and thankful) night’s sleep.

The next morning was another one of those idyllic Rocky Mountain days. The skies were clear, there was no humidity, and the temperature was in the low 60’s with a horizon that stretched beyond forever. If we were ever to forget the reason why we do these trips just the memory of this morning would be enough to drive that amnesia away forever. We had breakfast at the 5th Street Diner, put our fleece vests on under our riding jackets, and headed South again.

We had a short ride to Bozeman today, and my daughter was especially excited. It was one of her all-time favorite western towns. It was western for sure, but also a college town. Being the home of Montana State University, and she being a college student herself, she felt particularly at home there. I loved it too.

We stopped mid-morning for coffee and took off our fleece vests. As I opened the travel trunk in the rear to put the vests away, I noticed that two screws had fallen out of the trunk lid. These were the screws that secured the top lid to the bottom or base of the trunk. I had to fix this pretty quickly, or we were liable to have the top blow off from the strong winds as we made our way down the road. We spent most of that afternoon at Ackley Lake, in the Lewis and Clark National Forest, before continuing South on Rt #89 towards Bozeman. I was still worried about the lid falling off and was using a big piece of duct tape as a temporary fix.

It was about 5:45 p.m. when we entered the small Montana town of White Sulphur Springs. They had a NAPA automotive store and by luck it was still open until six. I rushed inside and found the exact size screws that I needed. Melissa then watched me do my best ‘shade tree mechanic’ impersonation. I replaced the two missing screws while the bike was sitting in the parking lot to the left of the store. We then had fruit drinks, split a tuna salad sandwich from the café across the street, and were again on our way.

The sun was just starting to descend behind the mountains to our west, and we both agreed that this was truly the most beautiful time of day to ride. We were barely a mile out of town when I heard my daughter scream …

DAAAAAD !!!

At that moment, I felt the back of the bike move as if someone had their hand on just the rear tire and was shaking it back and forth. Then I saw it. An elk had just come out of the creek bed below, and to our right, and had misjudged how long it would take us to pass by. It darted across the highway a half second too soon brushing the back of the bike with its right shoulder and almost causing us to fall.

This time my daughter saw it coming before I did, and I’ll never forget the sound of her voice coming across the bike’s intercom at a decibel level I had never heard from her before. She is normally very calm and reserved.

We had actually made contact with the elk and stayed upright. If it had happened in front of the bike, we wouldn’t have had a chance. Thank God, with over forty years of experience and some luck, I didn’t lock up the front brake this time. That would have caused us to lose control of the front tire and as we had already lost control of the one in the back, it would have almost guaranteed a crash to our left.

Strike Two!

We rode slowly the rest of the way to Bozeman. We convinced each other that two near misses in less than a week would be enough for five more years of riding based on the odds. At the Best Western Motel in Bozeman, we unloaded the bike and went to my daughter’s favorite restaurant for Hummus. As the waitress took our order and then left, Melissa stared at me across the table with a very serious look in her eyes. “Dad, I don’t think we should ride anymore after about four o’clock in the afternoon. The animals all seem to drink twice a day, (the roads following the rivers and streams), and it’s early in the morning and later in the evening when we’re most at risk.” I said I agreed, and we made a pact to not leave before 9:30 in the morning and to be off the road by 4:00 in the afternoon.

This meant we wouldn’t be riding during our favorite part of the day which was dusk, but safety came first, and we would try as hard as we could to live within our new schedule. Our next stop tomorrow would be Gardiner Montana which was the small river town right at the North entrance (Mammoth Hot Springs) to Yellowstone National Park. There were colder temperatures, and possibly snow, in the forecast, so we put our fleece vests back on before leaving Bozeman. At 9:30 a.m. we were again headed South on Rt. #89 through Paradise Valley.

After a few stops to hike and sightsee, we arrived in Gardiner at 4:10, only a few minutes beyond our new maxim. It had already started to snow. It was early June, and as all regular visitors to Yellowstone know, it can snow in the park any of the 365 days of the year. We hoped it wouldn’t last. There was not much to do in Gardiner and as beautiful as it was here, we wanted to try and get to West Yellowstone if we were going to be stuck in the snow. We had dinner at the K-Bar Café and were in bed at the motel by the bridge before nine. All through the night, the snow continued to fall intermittently as the temperature dropped.

When we awoke the next morning, the snow had stopped but not before depositing a good two to three inches on the ground. The town plow had cleared the road, and the weather forecast for southern Montana said temperatures would reach into the high 40’s by mid-afternoon. The Venture was totally covered in snow and seemed to be protesting what I was about to ask it to do. I cleaned the snow off the bike and rode slowly across the street and filled it up with gas. I then came back to the motel, loaded our bags, and Melissa got on the bike behind me.

“Are we gonna be alright in the snow, Dad?” she asked. As I told her we’d be fine if it didn’t get any worse than it was right now, I had the ******* crossed on my left hand that was controlling the clutch.

We swung around the long loop through Gardiner, went through the Great Arch that Teddy Roosevelt built honoring our first National Park, and entered Yellowstone. As we approached the guard shack to buy our pass, the female park ranger said, “You’re going where? There’s four inches of snow at the top. We plowed it an hour ago, but you never know how it’s going to be until you get over it.”

‘OVER IT,’ is where we were headed, and then down toward the Madison River where we would turn right and continue on to West Yellowstone. Even though the Park is almost 100% within the state of Wyoming, two of its entrances (North and West) sit right inside the border of the great state of Montana.

“If you keep it slow and watch your brakes, you’ll probably be fine.” “Two Harley riders came through an hour ago, and I haven’t heard anything bad about them. They were headed straight to Fishing Bridge and then to the Lodge at Old Faithful.” “Well, If the Harleys can make it we certainly can” I told my daughter, as we paid the $20.00 fee and headed up the sloping, and partially snow-covered, mountain.

We made it over the top which was less than a ten-mile ride headed South through the park. This part of the trip didn’t require braking and would be easier than the descent on the backside of the mountain. As we started our way down, I noticed the road was starting to clear. Within ten minutes, the asphalt on this side of the mountain was totally dry and our confidence rose with each bend of the road. It was just then that my daughter said, “Dad, I need to stop, can you find me a restroom?” A restroom in Yellowstone, not the easiest thing to find. If I did find one, at best it would be a government issue outhouse, but I told her I’d try. “Please hurry, Dad,” Melissa said.

In another mile, there was a covered ‘lookout’ with three port-a-potties off to the right. I pulled over quickly, and my daughter headed to the closest one on the left. I then walked over to the observation stand and looked out to the East towards Cody. As most Yellowstone vistas, the beauty was beyond description, but something wasn’t quite right, and …

Something Felt Strange

I looked off in the distance at Mt. Washburn. The grand old mountain stood majestic at almost 10,000 feet, and with its snow-capped peak, it looked just like the picture postcards of itself that they sold in the lodge. I still felt strange.

Then I Understood Why

As I looked off to my right to walk back to the bike, I saw it.

Standing to the left of my motorcycle, and less than thirty yards in front of me, was the biggest silver and black coyote I had even seen. Many Park visitors mistake these larger coyotes for wolves, and this guy was looking straight at me with his head down. As I walked slowly back to the bike, he never took his eyes off me with only his head moving to follow my travel. I got to the bike and wondered if I should shout to my daughter. I knew if I did, it would probably scare the Coyote away, and this was shaping up to be another of those seminal Yellowstone moments. I wanted to see what would happen next.

I slowly opened the trunk lid on the back of the bike. We always carried two things in addition to water — and that was fig-newtons and beef jerky. The reasoning was, that no matter what happened, with those three staples we could make it through almost anything. I took a big piece of beef jerky out of the pouch and showed it to the hungry Coyote. His head immediately rose up and he pointed his nose in the air while taking in the aroma of something that he had probably never smelled before.

I don’t normally feed any of the animals in Yellowstone, but this encounter seemed different. This animal was trying to make contact and on instinct alone I reacted. As I walked slowly to the front of the bike, I ripped off a small piece of the beef jerky and threw it to the coyote. He immediately jumped backwards (coyotes are prone to jumping) while keeping his head and eyes focused on me. He then took two steps forward, sniffed the processed beef, picked it up in his jaws, and in one swallow it was gone. He now looked at me again.

This Time I Was Two-Steps Closer

He was now less than fifteen feet away with his head once again down. He was showing no signs of aggressive behavior, and as I still had my helmet and riding suit on, I felt like I was in no danger. I didn’t think a fifty-pound coyote could bite through Kevlar and fiberglass, and I was starting to feel a strange connection with this animal that was getting a little closer all the time. I threw him another piece.

Was It About The Beef Jerky, Or Was It Something More?

Again, he took two steps forward to retrieve the snack and then raised his eyes up to look at me. At this close range I started questioning myself. What if it is a Wolf I asked, and then once again I looked at his tail. Nope, it’s a Coyote, I convinced myself, as I held my ground and continued to extend my hand out in the direction of my new friend. This time he didn’t move. It was now my turn. I was down on both knees in the leftover snow from last night and started to inch my way forward by sliding one knee in his direction and then the other. He took a small step back.

I then started to talk to him in a low and hushed tone. He moved one step closer. The beef jerky at the end of my hand was now less than five feet from his mouth. We stayed in this position for the longest time until I heard a loud “DAD!!!” coming from the direction of the port-a-potties. My daughter was finished and saw me kneeling down in front of the ‘Wolf.’

When she screamed, the Coyote bounded (jumped) again and ran off in the opposite direction (East) from where I was kneeling. He ran about fifty yards and then turned around to take one more look at me. He then slowly entered the tree line that bordered the left side of the road up ahead.

“Dad, what were you doing?” my daughter asked. “Do you think you’re Kevin Costner in Dances With Wolves?” I laughed and said no, “just trying to communicate with a new friend.” My daughter continued to shake her head in my direction as she put on her helmet. I started the bike, put it in gear, and we headed again South down the park mountain road.

We had gone less than a quarter of a mile when something darted right out in front of the bike. It was that same Coyote that I had tried to feed just minutes before. He was about twenty yards in front of me and thank God I didn’t have to do any fancy maneuvering to miss him. I didn’t even have to use the brakes.

Still, this was now three encounters in less than a week. Or was it three? I convinced myself that running over a Coyote wouldn’t have been fatal. Painful maybe, but we would have survived it.

Strike Two And A Half!

We couldn’t help but laugh as we wondered if the Coyote had done it on purpose. Was he trying to scare us for not leaving the rest of the beef jerky or just saying goodbye? We’d never know for sure, but I wanted to believe that the latter was true. I will always wonder about how close he may have come.

As we got to the bottom of the long mountain descent, the sign announcing the Madison River and the road to West Yellowstone came up on the right. We made the turn and then spent what seemed like forever marveling at the beauty of the Madison River. It looked like an easy ride into West Yellowstone until it started to snow again. We crested a large hill with only ten miles left to go. At the bottom of the hill was what looked like a lake covering the entire road. The bottom of the road where the hill ended was lower than the surrounding ground and was acting like a reservoir for the melting snow from the hills that surrounded it.

This Low Spot Was Right In The Middle Of The Road

We approached slowly and stopped to survey the approaching water. We needed to decide the right thing to do next. The yellow line that divided the road was barely visible through the water, and we both guessed that it couldn’t be more than twelve to fourteen inches deep. I decided guessing wasn’t good enough and put the kickstand down on the bike. Melissa held the clutch in to allow the motor to keep idling. I then walked into the water in my waterproof riding boots. The boots were over sixteen inches high. “Yep, no more than six or eight inches,” I yelled back to Melissa. “It just looks deeper. If we go slow, we’ll be fine to go through.”

I walked back, got on the bike, and retracted the kickstand and then put it in first gear. Just as I started to approach the pool, I noticed a huge shadow to my right. Two large Moose were standing just off the apron on the right side of the road. It looked like they either wanted to cross the flooded asphalt, or drink, as they stood less than twenty-five feet away from where we now were. Every time I moved closer to the water, they did the same thing. Three times we did this, and a Broadway choreographer couldn’t have scripted it better. The two Moose moved in concert with our timing getting closer to not only the water, but to us, each time we moved.

Moose, like Grizzly’s, have no real natural enemies except man, and unlike all other members of the deer family, they have a perpetually bad disposition. They seem to be permanently in a bad mood and are not to be trifled with or approached. Even the great Grizzly gives the Moose a wide berth. I stopped the bike again unsure of what to do next.

It Was A True Mexican Standoff In The Woods Of Wyoming

“Melissa then said, “Dad; Let’s try banging on the tank and blowing the horn like we do with Buffalo. Maybe then they’ll cross in front of us, and we can get outta here.” I thought it was a good idea and worth a try. I again put the kickstand down and told Melissa that if they charged us not to run but to get down low beneath the left side of the bike. That way, the Venture would hopefully take the brunt of their charge. I started banging on the tank, as I pushed the horn button with my other hand …

Nothing, Nada!

Both Moose just held their ground stoically looking at the water. It was a true ‘Mexican standoff,’ where we were Speedy Gonzalez faced off against the great Montezuma. No matter how much noise we made, the Moose never budged an inch. After fifteen minutes of this, we decided to go for it. I put the bike back into gear, and going faster than I normally would, I entered the reservoir on top of the still visible yellow line. With a rooster tail of water shooting out from behind the bike over twenty-feet long, we crossed the flooded road.

Once across, we went fifty yards past the water and then stopped to look back. Both Moose had turned around and were headed back into the woods from where they had come. They either had no more interest in traversing the water or had been playing with us making our crossing difficult, while at the same time memorable, and another great story to tell.

Strike Three!

We pulled into West Yellowstone, and the snow was coming down in blizzard like sheets. We spent the next two days touring the shops and museums and even visited the Grizzly Bear ‘Habitat,’ which neither of us will ever do again. Grizzly Bears belong in the wild and not in some enclosure to be gawked at by accidental tourists. We also talked about our past four days ‘communing’ with the animals. We both agreed that we had been lucky and that we would continue to live within our 9:30 to 4:00 schedule as we continued our trip.

I lay in bed that night both thankful and in wonder of all that had happened. I thought about the deer, elk, coyote, and moose that had crossed over into our world. As hair-raising as it had been at the time, I wouldn’t have a changed a thing. I also thought about my over forty years of motorcycle riding. It was just then that a familiar maxim was once again forefront in my mind — as well as my heart. I repeated the familiar words over to myself as I slowly drifted off to sleep …

“When I Die, It Will Never Be On A Motorcycle”

I’m  at work
Buzzing to get out of there
Out of the fluorescence
And the din of screaming children
As it downplays the howling heads
Of their mothers who
Dream of their children’s exposed
Necks and getting out of the grocery store
Before it starts to rain.

I am Bobcat Goldthwait
underneath
The large hanging lamps,
pale green as barge lights
I make little sounds with my lips
And tongue, little incoherent sounds
To push the time forward .

A man comes through
My line holding a beige patch
Of cloth
Over his exposed trachea beneath,

with a voice like he crushes cement
puts it in his coffee
and ***** it up through a fiberglass straw.,
He drops some
Toothpaste and a brush on the counter
And says to me with that mutilated
Voice:
“there are only two types of *****,
Big old *****,
And old big *****.”

His skin is blotchy in the cheeks
like the husks of craters seen from the sky,
and the corners of his mouth
are dry and cracked
snaking and splitting outward like dry riverbeds.

For a second I want to laugh so hard,
That people will think I’m crazy, and
Maybe one of the twitchy managers will have
Me committed.

If he says any more, it’s this:
“You’re young, enjoy it,
if you worry
About the fuckups now,
you’ll Be worrying
until you’re an old ******
and that doesn’t do you any good,
***** hates the old **** ups.”

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

The house broth trickles onto the plywood floor
Filtered by fiberglass cotton candy
A humid breeze slams the oblong door
and knocks over the table I found so handy

This storm has brought my ceiling down on my head
The rafters are surely next to fall
Thunder sings songs with words never said
That entices the slugs to climb the wall

A deathtrap, a battlefield, a childhood home
have fused to form this cocoon of mold
The flies have settled, no longer to roam
and I'm left for the winds to bend and fold

This leaky old roof that Grandfather built
can barely now stand, let alone shelter strays
But if I leave in the night, I drag only my guilt
My body goes wandering, but my dream world stays

The plumber came to call or The self-draining P’trap

To all the plumbers I have met, and yes I've met a few,
Domestic pipes, commercial pipes and civil pipe-work too,
Blow torch and solder, flux and joints,
Tricky bends and straight bits, in perfect counterpoint.

Then of course the big stuff, pipes bigger than your shoulders,
Not supplied by DIY, only bought from stockholders,
No solder for this job, a welding torch’s the thing,
Careful tack, align no crack, weld a perfect ring.

All the pipes are connected, whether large or domestic small,
Fill with water and pressurize, hoorah, no leak at all,
Flush the pipes, flow is fine, a job with a happy ending,
Pack the tools grab the kit, thank god I’ve finished bending.

The domestic user is dabbling, with a little pipe-work flair,
Can’t be that difficult, just one joint here, or the odd joint there,
All seems fine, fresh water in, waste water out,
I’m not going to spend money, on a plumber’s callout,
The waste seems not to drain well, gracious, how can that be,
I connected what I thought was right, no it can’t be me

It appears the waste pipe is blocked, gone are the comforting swirls,
This must be where the gooey stuff goes, and all those hairy curls,
I can clear the blockage, how difficult can it be,
Now, the water goes down the plug hole, around a wiggly bit, I see,
I think they call that a P-Trap, that’s all technical news to me
An old wire hanger, with force of water, will definitely do the trick
Plunge hanger down the hole, wiggle it round a bit, give it a flick,
The water hasn’t moved an inch, and the wire is firmly stuck,
Time to remove the P-trap, and deal with the unpleasant muck,
How difficult can this be, what could possibly go wrong,
Get the tools, lay on my back, this shouldn’t take too long,
Gripping trap tightly, with little effort it should unscrew,
Nothing moves, try again, it’s ****** tight, I think the thread’s askew,
A tap with my hammer, will loosen this stubborn joint,
No movement is detected, both sides are still conjoint,  
A mighty whack should do the trick, just to make my point,

A thin stream of water, is dribbling down my arm,
Success, I grab the trap, twist like merry hell, and to my alarm,
The stored bath water gushes out, the mood is far from calm.

Pushing the trap together again, trying to stem the flow,
A loud voice calls, from the dining room below,
What the hell are you doing, water’s all over my Chapeau.

Sorry my love, move your hat, it’ll be fixed in a trice,
Me thinks, If I don’t fix this very soon, I’ll need a flotation device,
Just a five minute job, am I kidding myself, my mouth is all agape,
I hunt around with my free hand, and grab the gaffer tape.

I unwind the life saver, and wrap it around the leak,
Let’s consider the situation, to avoid my wife’s serious fit of pique,  
Keep my mind focused, what could possibly go wrong,
A solution is required this very minute, that won’t take overlong.

I’ll wedge my hammer, beneath the troublesome trap,
This will give extra support, whilst my plan, I have time to map,
As I swung the hammer into place, there came a mighty crack,
A hole appeared in the bath end, I suffered a symbolic heart attack.

Time to call the plumber, and hang my head in shame,
My wife’s assessment of DIY, will never be the same,
Emergency call out was swift, a smiling youth at my door,
Lead me to the problem site, and I will probe and explore.

An estimate was made, whilst ******* air through his teeth,
What Pratt, he said, has been working on the trap beneath,
Is it bad, my wife has strength of a gorilla, it’s beyond belief,
I’m afraid it’s a bath, a trap and associated pipe work, good grief.

It’s going to be expensive, there’s the bath and tiling too,
I can’t do it straight away, but I’ll put you in the queue,
Said he was interested in the engineering feat,
Designing a self draining P-trap, was a little hard to beat.


A temporary repair was fashioned, with fiberglass and tape,
I cleared the mess around me, and quickly made an escape,
It was some days later, I thought I’d clear the gutters,
I could tell the family were not keen, by their groans and their mutters,
Not to be diverted, I disregarded all their ridicules,
I told the wife I’d start right now, but she’d locked away my tools.

If the fallacy of thought
lies within the indifference
of a heart's indrawn
breath,
would there be a second
chance to mold a circle
from the intangible
fluid epic of dream?

Could so much blinding
light encompass the
derelict and the saved,
bathing all that is seen
in the breeze
of fairy wings that just
learned how to fly?

There are no shadows here
beneath a full moon of
illumination where
everything is cast into the
shade of pearls and silver,
one tinged with the sea,
another with air

At the core of a spiral
tree, in the hollow center
of a peach's eye
we could then look into
the unveiled truth of
Nature's simplicity,
separate the *******
from the poetry,
and the muse from the song

But if we're gathered here,
does that mean we're
about to meet our maker,
that this mystery of life
should be released in a sonnet
written through a fiberglass pen?

There are no strangers here
beneath the harsh glare
of a full moon,
where everything is reduced
to pearls and silver,
varying shades of pink
and gray

And if this litany is so
much scattered stardust
on the surface of an infinity
that can't be asked to care,
does it matter either way
if what we say is set
in stone or sand,
that our words remain
here as whispers caught in
the seashell of unending time?

Because there are no
secrets here beneath the
illumination of a
full-bodied moon
We are all children playing
amongst pearls and silver,
not knowing yet that our
trinkets have worth

We are still innocent
to war and strife and grief
So let us toss up our
circles of pearls,
let us trod over these
streets of silver,
let us gather here once more
before Eden fades into
the dark side of the moon...

Strings plucked by cold fingers on cold hands.
The hand-bone's connected to the heart-string....
Sinew rasps against brazen cords, etching orchestral symphonies on the stone in my chest.
Riding the waves of screams, cries, songs...time.
Upon that crest I ride, ever away from that distant shore;
     Ever away from that distant hope.
Ever away.

Caught in the tide of cold spring air.
Cool air sifted through fiberglass filters. Menthol kissing lips, freezing the air across my teeth.
Welcome, Nicotine.
Welcome to my body; lift me on your crest, carry my inhibition.
Invoke your calm upon my weary mind and let me forget I am alone.

Alone? Or...alone...?

Faces will be forgotten.
Sand covers cracks...sand covers much....
Time covers much, but not all.
Who will you remember best? Whom will I never forget? Who won't I have to?
The sand will fill the gaps, but...my house is clean....

Clockwise from the front, right: chap stick, lighter, change; nothing; wallet, gang-ties; pump; phone's in the jacket.
This is my identity, always with me - my companions. But none are company.
None can give what I seek. None, it seems.
Desolation is a feeling. And feelings console.
At least you can be certain of their purpose, at least you know who they are.

Who are you?
How will I know?
When will I see that wry smile and be certain of it?
Give me that stone heart, that I may etch my symphony upon it.
Let my sinew warm those brazen strings.
Ride upon my crest.
Be my Nicotine, my sand...my certainty.

Pre administered microphoned speak
Speaking to the gambler and his misgivings
Chips placed in precarious
.... stacks
A pro placed bet
............shoved red ridged
..................circles shifting to the edge
..............................Comes the blue round O’r

worth less shrieks the minister
fat cheeks filled
free guacamole and taco chips
spittled to green felt table

In the gamblers hands
Red eyed queen and a wink
One weekend free cable
One lovely ****** ironically called Babe

Dip in the pool later
To calm the quivering
A fat man
Blue suited blubbering
Creates BIG splash
With the turquoise laidies
And their baubled tans

plastic palm tree reef
fiberglass coral majesty
a porpoise in life
decorated pink walls

Flying Elvi graceland the sky
The sky is falling heartbreak hotel
Thrusting crotches and dazzling sequins
In sequence
A paramount event
A paramount event
A paramount event
Parrots the crowd

A drive towards the desert
Flagged down by neon cowboy
Waving cactus
Like spikey *****
Two doors down
Brothel boasting
The red lid of Venus
Gamblers ***** might never be the same

Two slicks of the drip
Cry hell to the strip
That ***** was not Venus
But a villain
Fast to Walgreens for a lil white pill
Called penicillin

jet fueled finished
narrow yellow arrowed
lane of no return the same
feels 747 roar of lift
and grand departure of
pre vaca postcard capture
a life called normalcy’s
purgatoried
fate

labyrinth lit by
floodlights straining
the vibrations
emanating from the
ground crusted with
glue pine sap and
citric acid a
flashlight in hand
to shine shadows
on awareness to
cast the eyes shut
and unflinching
not a twitch of
sight feeling the
coarse pig hair of
the walls shutting
out the light with
clenched lids open
palms with fiberglass
gashes staining a
path not to follow
but to inhale the
pathogenic patterns
ghosts showing us
the way towards
translucent permanence

It’s time for chemicals
******* the fiberglass
Roll with the punches
****, Roll, ****, Roll

we’ve traded knowing apples with
lush green mothers of cadmium
and fiberglass
veins of copper,
silver, and gold

siliconed our brains to currents
of controlled thunder

we ****** flat breasted,
hand-sized puddles of glass like
only lesbians and lonely wives
can wish for

iron our souls out
in selfies of people
we wish we were

epoxied our hearts to
shallow resins of hope

we’ve
followed polyester roads
of truth

have we forgotten the
simple flesh of carbon?

the
naked
nitrogen
of our belly buttons?

the
happy
hydrogen
of our eye lids?

the
oxygen of ******?

**** me not
with metals of progress

but with
ancient odes of
skin and calcium
teeth

i’ll take the devil of
old

over this

have we met ? seems so. you got them elastic rainbows i know you from
and that outskirts of pure idyll... you throttle the ominous pond of our requited aplomb.
we enjoy beetles.
this is how love chips away at the decade of obscure lesions. the reverse forward to a back-hand eclipse in a blithering idiot of genius. unkempt.
a bone rug.
the skim milk of human kindness, blinds the unicorn and the cabbage lichen
florescent in the mildew parchment of evening's attire.
i'll be here at the met, less attending but haunting the fiberglass whispers of your recent events.
the ones you left. left to their own devices. our every crisis is kind myth, crushing the throat of our adversary. as we pluck shamrocks in the way of our luckless fathers.
we alter the plausible cause with our audible launch
of not rockets.
where the air...
the air don't sing.
but you ain't been there
really

anyway.

You could have reached here Wednesday by last choice
Perhaps your mood shifted. All the calm nights
you had now lay awake. You explore the city
built by the perfect people, white cathedral
stands upright on a slant, a compass buried in plain sight,
the gibberish of art students from painting lullabies as sirens.
Only children are asleep. The university
grows younger each year. The best teacher
is always late, not realizing her impact.

The person I’m most comfortable with
stays in bed. Security found indoors
the couch allures, security in the capsule,
The deafening whispers, the genuine friends
who live nearby and can’t talk straight. The blessed temple
building worshiped by advertising majors.

The lucid potential, morning sprints round the track,
a library sustained by crushed Adderall —
glowering orbs rotating back counter clockwise,
out of chimneys the black spirits climb,
detectives bicycling, the honor students rummaging
for class notes in the deep end of the dumpster.

So this is college? That frontier plateauing
before you can dive off a cloud? So this utopia
was a dollhouse, the daily on the doormat
camps in the hallway: waits while the child watches
a sit-com?
Don’t apartments stand still? Are abstract paintings
and basketball supposed to nurture a city,
not only Richmond, but also other lonely cities
of misunderstood brunettes, dank **** and dubstep
the weekend will seldom put out
until the city you moved to shuts its eye?

Just tell yourself, “live.” The best teacher, eighteen
when she moved to the university, still grins
even as she coughs out fiberglass. Any day now,
she sings, I’ll take a drive and leave this place.
I pull her close and say. You haven’t slept in your own bed.
The boy who you’ve always loved still thinks about you.
The books you read before breakfast,
whoever the author may be, inspires
and your least favorite student who raises her hand
is judged but her posture never falters.

Sitting in the narrowest cabin
half made of glass half fiberglass
it could be for a death or a birth
Corridors full of standing people side by side as if
They will talk all night but
Sun has set down already and
We have crossed the villages
The bazaars
My devouring eyes
Its now time to sink down

Dim lights
here and there
I have seen a praying man for his cup of meal
presenting this to his own

All gods sit on the road side

Dim lights here and there

The last match has blown out
by the wind alas

alas i cannot write
Write no more
alas

We'll go althogether so

Patience's silence
Change

Change
to a hymn
of surrounder

We'll go Altogether so
towards

The land of the kings
The sun

will rise for us
in a desert
Like a dream

and maybe a dream

Yes we'll go altogether so
Until dawn
...
but for now
I will just watch the stars
from where i lie
and listen to a song
...

Not just anything will do,
I want the '66 coupe.
The Corvette
That is deep maroon.

It will gleam in the sun,
With its masculine curves,
Fiberglass weight,
A throaty burn.

I will have it,
One of these days.
I will not settle
For a lower taste.

I will park it on some road,
At two in the morning.
I will be so alive,
My heart will be burning.

The stars will be masquerading
Across the soft summer night.
I will be with someone special,
Looking up to the sky.

Our lips may lock together,
Like our hearts already are.
I met this soul long ago,
We have come so far.

Maybe, the next morning,
We will drive it to a cafe.
We will talk endlessly,
There is always so much to say.

Me and this other half,
Will run away for awhile.
To the coast, up north,
Anywhere that she smiles.

The Corvette
The '66 coupe.
I don't you have yet.
I will find you soon.

But I already have my love.

technology
Frayed wires like spider webs around a broken motherboard
Pieces of green fiberglass and resistors torn
Shattered glass where the screen used to be
Yet the hard drive still carries pictures of you and me

art
Stick glue and duct tape; stitch up what was worn
Pieces of cardboard heart and soul mended; keep each other warm
Splatter paint on each other in white to renew the canvas
Draw new memories in melted crayon

biology
Be the wind that blows new life into my lungs
Be the hiking, the fishing, and the sun
Be the tree with strong roots; grow tall
Be the stone support beneath the waterfall

sociology
Together we can establish a friendship
Between the past, the future, and especially the present
Never give in to tyranny or fear
Live on what you've learned "no more tears"

arithmetic
One plus one could equal me and you
which is significantly equivalent to two
I won't make you divide your legs or multiply
Just hold up my numerator so i can touch the sky

language*
にほんご: 愛してる
Français: Je t'aime
اللغة العربية : أحبك
English: I love you

I was alone, but not too lonely.  
You were strong, but that was only
When your brothers were around.  

Brand new, seemed like something better.
Pretty scars, eyes like leather.
So much different than we’d seen.

We made love with a choking hand.
We stayed drunk on a million plans.
We were running out of time.  
                      
      Even the cruel get worse than they deserve.
      Even the cruel get worse than they deserve.
      Even the cruel get worse than they deserve,
      But baby, you deserve to have it all  

I was sweating through fiberglass.
I got a feeling in my hands
I’d be apologizing to my dreams.

Tripping slow, spit in the glass,
Blood on the pillows, falling fast,
Choking on a nickle in the dark.  

Laughing happy with manic moon,
Melted glass in a broken spoon.
We were the spirit of the times.

     Even the cruel get worse than they deserve ... etc.

I bent down on a blizzard day
To find out what was in my way.
It was you, you were praying to nothing at all  

I lit a candle to the ghost of magazines.
I burned down a ******* with kerosine.
I was wondering why I felt so bored.  

I woke up on the rooftop.
I was making sure there were no cops,
Alone, but not too lonley, staring down at the street.

Puff in that fiberglass and
Let it course through your
Blood. It’s that feeling again.
Yeah, THAT feeling-the one
That makes you feel so invincible.
That bittersweet taste begins
To crawl its way into your lungs,
And you stop caring about what’s
Around you and start to feel
What’s in front of you.

Clear skies become cloudy,
Dirt lodges begin to crumble,
Diabetics start passing out,
Wasted kids  lie on the sidewalk,
And  all you can think about
Is  that small connection
That was ignited off of a
Very small spark that
Lit the kerosene on fire
And nearly morphed you
Into a corpse.

You don’t ever want the fire to
Go astray, but it’s better off
With the Fray. Every fiber of your
Being is bound to this feeling-
You’re addicted.
This want is now your need, and
The only thing you can do
Is let it course on through.
So, keep puffing that fiberglass
And don’t let the circulation stop.

Remember that time
when I was
on a first date with that guy.
I brought him to your place
and we sat
at the edge of the pool
while you laughed at the
german-exchange student
swimming laps.

And I jumped in with all of my clothes on
and he wasn’t sure whether to laugh
or not,
because of the way I floated
but he didn’t know that it was
something I always did

He texted me later saying
he wished he kissed me
but I didn’t check
until morning
because we were singing loud
and the neighbors were yelling

We lived outside of Richmond
but didn’t like to think of it that way
like it was separate
but the way we put up fences
like rows of wooden teeth
isolated us within

The patches on the
Huguenot Bridge, the old one
made your car bounce
and the radio went
in and out
Remember that time
when we would only smoke
marlboro’s?



That guy’s car
was a stick
so it didn’t move the
same way yours did
and he accidentally turned
down that one way street
on our way to meet you
at that show

But I don’t even remember
going in
because of something
like the doors were closed
but the sound was ****** so
we walked around the corner
to that place we like to go
and sit on the pillows on the floor

At home I sat on the third floor
alone, and the lack of laughter
is louder somehow
And the shadows stretch
further as the night gets
longer and draws
out the little pieces...

Let’s stay sane
so we drive downtown
and see three guys
long boarding
down broad street at midnight
they’re in that band that’s pretty good
so we yell out the window
and break into a long laugh.  

Sadness is like salt
that pool was like the
dead sea
it helps you float
because no one
wants to sink to such
abundant misery

And joy
it was there too
riding in cars with you and
that guy who loved me like a fool

The two ideas of pain and joy lingered over me
like opposing magnets
but the water must have been cold
because I was numb

But when gravity pulls from two sides
it compresses
The Earth breaks and makes a mountain;
I broke and sank to the fiberglass bottom
of your *****, suburban pool.

i feel like a car crash
like fiberglass dust ground into
blood stains sticking to my tshirt there is
nothing left but the way that i feel
dizzy, like my bones have shifted an inch to the left
and the rest of me forgot to follow
i feel out of it, lost in a sea of
burning rubber and smoking engine
grease
i feel like my weight has been lifted and i am
floating into space, like
the universe made room for me in her arms and i am
ascending to the outer reaches of
life
and everything,
everything is chaos
this entropy settles into my skin and i am
reaching outward, trying to find a tactile response to my
existence,
trying to figure out how i know this is
reality and not a coma dream.
i am endlessly screaming into this void,
devoid of faith and lost to sensation
i am learning.
i am learning what it is like to be
found
not safe, not sound, but
here.
i am the embodiment of dark matter love and
here i lay, awaiting the moment when you say that i can come
home.

Imagine grey, a sky like arsenic
Clouds like insulated fiberglass
And it’s raining too

I’m standing outside, feeling soggy
Looking greasy
With a sad umbrella just
Waiting to crack its ribs and turn
Inside out

It’s a contest, the first to blow apart
And rot in a landfill wins

I have coffee, but it has skim milk
And looks opaque
And smells like…
Tea
Squelch down the avenue
and run into someone you don’t want to
Accept the murky blanket of the day
And trudge along
Because today belongs to the Drudge

I'm sorry, I'm such a sorry man,
regrettably, I thought of our old love,
remembering nights of amorous hugging,
bending you over, spreading your legs,
entering your body, finding a place
to reside, though not deep inside,
not where the creature of love casts
his gaze at me, from his light
with a shadowed eye, seeing through you and I,
to the future cast in the die, I fall
hard you said, quietly, so quiet and
hushed, without weight.

When you talked about your dreams, they always escaped
your mouth in a mote of smoke,
into the spackled ceiling it snaked,
wisping, serpentine, through all the fiberglass,
into the atmosphere, into the solar system,
not yet burned away, into the stars,
where all of you resides, all your dreams.

Back on earth, my eyes fixed on your escaping self,
I imagined no happy endings, no good way
to say a sad goodbye, a burning lullaby.

No way,  even naked,
in the bed we shared, did we share a single shred of truth.

Curled up in my arms, naked bodies sweating from the *******,
not just not knowing each other anymore, not just not listening, but so close to the singularity when we were *******,
so close to zero gain,
that when you said we may be having a baby,
I didn't know enough about you to say yes,
only knew enough about *******,
to say no to yes.

I'm sorry I turned out to be such a sorry *** man.