"inlets" poems
At the beginning
Is an open sea
Knowing nothing
But its own
Owning every
Beach it met
Not knowing enough to feel alone
After many
Long years it finds
There is much
More for to see
Inlets and outlets
On every shore
A sense of greater freedom to be free
The sea joined
To many rivers
Seeing land
On either side
Freedom then became
Just a memory
The river's end was not in sight
But along the way
An Ocean Watershed
Joining rivers to the sea
It had to sleep
In many river beds
To see what it was meant to be
Down in the river
Flowing headlong
To the sea
Joining the
River's rage
That is where
I long to go
That is where I am meant to be.
Jul 17, 2017
Jul 17, 2017 at 12:52 PM UTC
Trickling tingles bubble, goaded from the verdant body
As a butterfly’s flutterings coax the flow
Widening and filling
With a gentle lapping of inlets
Ripples tease the reeds into turgid tremors
Merging to waves
Wave upon wave
Curves slide over curves
And at the Delta’s swollen, gaping breadth
Crests slip over craving crevices
Slapping froth in desperate gasps
Milking cruel spasms from the urgent need to reach escape
Until with turmoil resolved
A gentle calm inundates the great ocean of sleep.
Jun 2, 2014
Jun 2, 2014 at 9:34 AM UTC
oh, san juans, your riches beckon
your wealth, your beauty calls
your waveless, salty waters blue
my heart since childhood draws
your waters lap at darkened rock
'round islands, bays and inlets fill
with returning salmon teeming
your breaking waters thrill
your tide, oh ever river changing
charges muddy oyster flats
your thriving pods of orca leap
o'er spray in mid-air acrobats
from seabed swift, cold and deep
the lushness of your green hills rise
your sun falls fleet like shooting star
your sparkling waters mesmerize
sailing craft from ’neath horizon
angels spread their wings of color
skirt your shoals and ply your straits
find safety anchored in your harbors
oh, san juans, your wonder waits
your treasure and your magic calls
your waveless, crystal waters blue
my heart since youth still draws
calls me to return each year
to dip my paddle deep
when life averts the journey there
in dreams you beckon while i sleep
Oct 14, 2013
Oct 14, 2013 at 2:22 AM UTC
This is to all those misfits
To the Romeo car-washing in Inglewood inlets
To the Hippy selling crystals on the Venice boardwalk
The Magician swallowing 8-balls at the Huntington Beach peer
The Rapper selling CDs in the Ranch Market parking lot
The **** tatting in a makeshift garage
The Poet slinging chapbooks at cafes and rec centers…
Not androids pontificating from lecterns
But grimy roots burrowing deep
Seismic rumblings toppling down
Insured ivory towers
Smashing pilled-paradigms beneath Docs
Hustling and slinging
In the forbidden outshacks of civilization
In tents, over barbed-wire, beside shards
Desperate and burning
For neither Truth or Beauty
But for LIFE
They do not tap wrists
No, they thump chests
To feel it beat
To feel it rage
For fugitive fugues
For new eternities
They embrace
********** romance
Graveyard necromance
The holy hunger for change
Defying commercials and charts
Shivering and howling on streets
Waging guerrilla war
Liberating cubicled-hearts
Dec 23, 2016
Dec 23, 2016 at 8:20 PM UTC
The inlets
Wrap around the water
Writhing in the fury of the ocean’s waves,
Obscuring the distance they reveal
To the eyes that gaze absent mindedly
Down their beaches and their cliffs.
Indifferent to the conflict below,
The sun blazes down
But the winds cleanse the skin of its heat
As they are driven from the sea.
The sea that breaks the stoic rocks
And casts the sand’s lonely grains
-Along with the many homeless winds-
Across the beaches which slope
At the feet of their stony bluffs.
But the cliffs stand in austere grandeur
Defiantly surveying the endless waters
Whose numerous, ceaseless, enduring waves
Are kept at bay by the towering unity.
I am of the wind that has no home
In the conflict of sea and land
I am the sun that lights this vision:
Firmament of hills, sea and sand.
Tides come and go but never leave me
Sands shift in time but never deceive me
As sun I shine light on all at hand:
This ceaseless meeting of sea and land.
Sep 19, 2012
Sep 19, 2012 at 6:00 PM UTC
I don’t want to write this manuscript
I want to be a deep
Sea coral at the bottom of
A Norwegian fjord.
The great expanse of ice spirals
A rhythm to my swaying
Protected by the pressure
Of a bear hug water column.
Nobody will find me there except
Zooxanthellae who poured
Out from inlets around Greenland
Just to seek my warmth and
Feel the walls of my branchlets
Which they navigate like dirt
Roads in the Midwest, like oranges
And taste buds.
Oct 31, 2012
Oct 31, 2012 at 7:15 PM UTC
dolphin slaughter
in disingenuous and exquisite
Japanese inlets
hunger as an epidemic
in the shadowed corners of
the world
putrid and rotting flesh
rampant disease
gmo crops making us all
fat
these are things to
worry
about, to fret and rally over
yet here
I sit, wondering in
mild horror
why I write better poetry
with
two
shots
of whiskey
in my gullet
than when I am sober
Jul 20, 2015
Jul 20, 2015 at 1:14 AM UTC
1421
Such are the inlets of the mind—
His outlets—would you see
Ascend with me the eminence
Of immortality—
1.7k
The mosquitoes supped histamine limpets into our puckered flesh
dew gilted grass entombed our feet in dappled domes
refracting the overhead fireworks
smears of whirling color
accented by smoke mote ghosts
I forgot to wear my contacts
my near-sightedness
makes you giggle nervously -
a hard full body ****** of a laugh
it arches your spine
pulling our hand-holding into an expansion
only the lining betwixt finger inlets
galvanized our pulse
well, that and your voltaic laugh
its flourishing timbre
resonant
reverberant pyrotechnic
thickly glazing aural canal
lascivious tomes penned themselves
densely
upon neural plane
dendrites imprinting chemical insignia
moment captured in impressionistic blurs
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 8:35 PM UTC
Born and reared in the city of Bridgeport,
where the trash arose from Long Island Sound.
The seagulls appeared, then vanished from sight,
wafting and diving through radiant sky.
Some inlets and harbours, lapping the shore,
while sounds of young voices screamed with delight.
Marvelous moments to form our delight.
Skipping through the busy streets of Bridgeport.
Heading south down Park, to visit the shore.
Where all you could hear was the visual sound,
of airplanes and balloons, gracing the sky,
alive in my mind but quite out of sight.
The crystalline sparkle came into sight,
to everyone’s pure and simple delight.
We watched as the clouds emerged from blue sky,
over the stunted skyline of Bridgeport.
Suddenly the clamour, the noise, the sound
came crashingly close to the rocky shore.
With silence removed from that muffled sound,
bemoaning the graphite and speckled sky.
Searching and groping for inner delight.
pasteurized thoughts over the sandy shore.
Memorized pictures brought into our sight,
a lost time; in the bowels of Bridgeport.
Sail boats and tankers came upon the shore,
out of the distance, and into my sight.
All I could hear was breath of the sound,
with glee, laughter, and a certain delight.
The slums became the city of Bridgeport,
reaching endlessly toward the dancing sky.
Adrift; at peace, and awashed by the sound,
flippantly airy as ground touched the sky.
I strolled and smiled with love lost delight,
scampered along on our copious shore.
Aware that my flight was love at first sight,
on the coast, in the city of Bridgeport.
Amped delight amid the light of our sound
misconstrued Bridgeport scraped close to the sky,
up to the shore and again out of sight.
Apr 10, 2011
Apr 10, 2011 at 5:15 PM UTC
The night is a creeper bent laden with brooding meditations and the mists of time:
Tonight, the moon is a distant jasmine bud; nascent fragrance waiting to pour into the world.
I've seen your work, magicienne, how you roll the stars out from your hat.
A wand wave, and the celestial chorus of chants and hymns pours out from the skies.
I've walked with you, on the old beaten steppe, pole star,
I've seen ships dock at ancient inlets of water
engorging in parched lands - they were reed boats before;
they were catamarans later, rafts and sailboats;
This is how we rose from the mollusc, seeking you in the stars;
When thunder strikes the lonely peak and rains wash our plains,
I've seen your footsteps, half-erased by the swelling riverbanks.
I was in your womb, and never afraid of the primordial waters. Yours, an umbilical love.
The clouds part for your evening sojourn through the western sky,
where the larks go forth spreading cheer.
I am the wood, the last refuge of all mysteries.
I am the clearing where a solitary home hangs in time.
I house all the antiquities.
I am the subtle space that hosts bubble worlds.
I am Hyperions.
Feb 5, 2015
Feb 5, 2015 at 7:26 PM UTC
I have waited in certain landlocked towns,
Near and far, and far from here.
And I have sailed and been in low ports found,
Their inlets clad in salted air.
And I have dreamed on oft spoken of starry nights and on largely unspoken starless nights,
Of select places with opportune and tactless new found faces.
And I have lain out restless and uncomfortably awake,
Hearing human voices shriek and drown,
In salt clad harbor towns,
And heard those specific siren calls of those particular siren girls,
In those inlets, salt clad by the sea.
And still awake I have heard, in those waiting-space landlocked towns,
Curiously, those curious sounds,
Of only human and yet inhumane calls.
Dressed in that specific gauze of an agony-tone,
For that specific landlocked home,
Where drinkers go,
That drunkard’s throne,
And been sullen at that once and forever shoreless drone.
And I have also been, you see, in places left unknown.
And in a daydream I would hear and be heard by almost gasping voices,
From waking and still somehow sleeping and unbelieving men.
Grasping out onto air that has been made thin and further,
Been gasping.
Searching for woefully inaccurate words,
With a woefully inarticulate tongue,
And I have danced and been set atremble by the timbre of your breathe
And then enamored by the resonance of your gasp,
And I have gasped with a tongue set dancing behind lips all aflutter.
In those unutterable places with specifically unknown locations,
I have listened,
Through rock and metal,
Between those landlocked towns and those salt clad harbors,
For the full sound escaped from your trembled lips.
And I have listened, through daydreaming mist veils,
And through known and unknown places,
For that voice that speaks through space and time and rock and metal,
And I have only heard that curious sound of human and inhuman calls,
And I have heard those particular siren calls of those specific siren girls,
And that cry of human voices that shriek and drown.
Jan 17, 2013
Jan 17, 2013 at 11:00 PM UTC
We make grooves in our minds, I'm told
Our thoughts, the racing ones, that we go to
are like grooves, the ones we obsess about
and when we clear our minds we make new
connections, literally
new grooves and rivers and inlets and that's why it's so hard to break
a thought pattern and my groove
is a man, always and once I've done with one I am relieved and think
I will never do that again and then the going gets tough and
I am anxious and I suddenly start thinking about a new one
and I don't know him and or I don't like him and it's better
if he has a girlfriend or wife because I can think
oh, they have the perfect life and I am cold and outcast
looking in a perfection, out in the cold and
it's existential really, to ungroove this, to make
a new pathway I need to know, to make a groove that
says, no one is perfect and always happy
it doesn't exist in this world
and you are not the abandoned child looking in at
your parents happiness forever and ever
But it's so hard...my new one I don't even know...only in pictures
a kind of celebrity, of sorts, but I don't like things he's done and he's got
a wife who is on TV and I don't like her either since she's with him and she
knows what he's done, and is doing and she still married him
and they are not always perfectly happy
they are rich, and go to gatherings of the elite
but I've been to those and I hated them, was bored stiff
Couldn't breathe
But I am anxious--
A student next year will I be nearly all the time,
and it has been a long time since anything so freeing has happened to me or
frightening, because I've been used to a kind of hopeless drudgery,
but I will emerge with a new skill and live near the beach
and near one of my favorite places on Earth.
So what is there to be afraid of, really? Only the grooves
the grooves that take me back to suffering
only in my mind
Aug 18, 2013
Aug 18, 2013 at 12:51 AM UTC
*Bucolic piedmont woodland avenues , where rain clouds touch the hillside after welcome showers have passed
Where pungent fields of green native wild grass connect ones place
with his past
Red-tailed Hawk sentries stand guard o'er Loblolly Pine forest
Contemplative Blue Herons work scenic marshland unnoticed
Land of Pink Dogwood , Cane and blackberry thicket
Of riparian wonders , foggy cattle- worn bottom land , lake dancers that twirl morning side West Point , Lanier and Oconee inlets
To rural lanes colored with the blessings of home* .....
Jun 17, 2016
Jun 17, 2016 at 8:48 PM UTC
There are places
where my heart ripped out of my chest by my hands in a fit of clarity ,
i yearned to see what kept me alive, with blood dripping from my fingertips
and splashing onto my coat in artistic nonchalance
the beat, beat , beat , of my only heart
the beat , beat , beat , of my time keeper
the beat , beat , beat , drip , drip , drip , silent watcher of ****** functions
seeping onto the floor are the unwritten lines that flow into vein like patterns, as if the blood tries to reach the sea,
only backwards - the pool spreads around my feet
away the streams run
criss crossing like rivers from a plane
oxtail islands form with inlets that lead to dead end forests that spring up spontaneously on either side of the waters flow
get lost in the forest - only to find more forest
twinkling lights of skies dawn appear in the slipstreams and mountain ravines form slowly ,
valleys carved from the still beating *****
i wrap the contents in a plastic bag and put it in my coat pocket
so maybe i’ll remember that i’m beating my drum to my final beat
which will ring out -
oh patient heart
oh , oh , oh , peaceful heart
full of yearnings for untainted love
untouched , touched by malice
touched by dandelions drifting seeds
oh patient heart
fill up your lungs with night falls dew point air ,
and falling stars falling still
into my eyes that explode
with the light of a million suns
they burn.
they burn.
they burn.
without the embers of loves hope
i would surely stop right now
slide the knife into the flesh
hope for the best
what a wicked thing to do - to make me dream of you
the fall
the thunderstruck tower of loves , loves touch
send shivers up my spine and into the neuron pathways of tickled pink touches
and strange worlds open up
synapse exchange - electronic turns chemical and back again all too soon
lightning flashes without thunders encore
dappled light hits the spiders hammock
old ladies weave their dried up tears into jumpers
grandmas and grandpa’s their stories outshines the children they bear
what burden to carry on the shelf of self.
Sep 4, 2013
Sep 4, 2013 at 4:27 PM UTC
She sits on the rocks
An island between inlets
As the sea surges.
She sits on the rocks
Tempest within her raging
A beast in a cage.
She sits on the rocks
Hypnotised by crashing waves
Enticing her in.
She sits on the rocks
Brittle bones in silken skin
So vulnerable.
She sits on the rocks
An offering to neptune
Sacrificial lamb.
She slips from the rocks
In solitude no longer.
Witnessed by no-one.
Aug 5, 2015
Aug 5, 2015 at 10:14 AM UTC
Carried like a scent on the wind,
she pulls me along quietly,
no point in fighting, I've lost.
Pushing me forward, to a red end,
love is in the air, force is present, ever so sly,
pushing, wind at my sail, don't land, it is of cost.
It doesn't get better.
It morphs, carves and twists bones and flesh, no end,
wailing and flowing from a cave in the twilight coldly,
cutting, killing, crushing, no stopping the bloodlust,
breathing into & for me, a forced life to lend,
never put to self indulgence, never boldly,
waves bleed port & starboard, tranquility's holocaust,
systematic & brutal, my ink ever wetter.
Apr 9, 2015
Apr 9, 2015 at 12:24 PM UTC
When Daniel swam out towards the island,
the children and I saw it happen,
the family safe on shore, oblivious
to the riptides that pull
shells, weeds, flounder, and men down.
We could not believe the ocean claimed him.
He had romanced her,
witholding for once
his scorn for things too vast.
Today, I leave this coastline,
its cliff-faces and inlets.
I walk on the beach,
and then I walk into the water
up to my ankles, knees, waist,
up to my neck before I let the sea take me.
I swim,
I grow fins,
lose my arms and legs,
gills supplant my lungs,
and my face flattens 'til I'm fisheyed.
I am a citizen of the sea,
come to sue for my loss.
I swim like a mad maiden,
I swim,
then I dive below, dear Daniel.
Apr 22, 2012
Apr 22, 2012 at 4:36 PM UTC
Supine, I sonder...
all syzygies and cromulent salons.
Stalking inlets, outbound.... surrounding swathes of
simpletons and awkward savants.
Sublime, I bombinate blithely... babbling
oblique begonias -
abloom... beyond barbarous gardens.
I tune my loom to weave
a wondrous garland -
the envy of every Harvest Moon
eclipsed...
[ and beg no pardon ]
As The Aurora
of our angular momentum
aptly allude to our diluvian droughts.
boundlessly departed
from all dominion... Like -
a dessicated deluge
dormant at the heart
of an epibenthic
pearl of dew.
I slake my thirst at
the First Well...
desolate of mirth.
yet ever at
peace.
contiguous in the extreme.
Supine, i sonder....
stitching my
brother's shadow
to the heel
of my odyssey.
My Wilderness
complete... when I go
missing.
[ where i oughta be ]
May 12, 2018
May 12, 2018 at 12:02 AM UTC
I often think of the swimming body,
arms unfurling the rough afternoon lake
into smooth planks while stretching
through the catch,
carving mosaic reflections into
shapes reflecting glimpses of the sun
before strewn onto the surface like
broken pearl necklaces.
It was in this practice I learned patience,
in the process of the crossing
and perfection of glide,
the conclave with the lake and flow of
language between body and water
the dialogue of the skimming, rotating torso,
forehead below surface line, chin down
consummation of movement.
The body suspended
above the muddy bottom,
stretching through the round shoulder,
the square shape of the hand
with fingers slightly apart coiffing
currents,
surging naked anatomy forward.
In Autumn, the buoy clangs louder
conversing through fog
of the changing season
to lake swimmers, row on row,
blinded at their bow
reminding them of the turn,
the edge of the precipice
before cavernous depths
pilfer reason,
those masters of rhythm
turn attention to stroke of arms
away from blackness beyond sight,
where creatures dwell.
Pivoting parallel to the lakefront,
elongated through the feet,
into the legs, along the chest,
barren ******* cutting waters
connecting one shore to the next,
before absolute zero of winter sets in
the vein splitting East-West coursing
between inlets, skirting islands
and birch skinned canoes
dancing atop foamy plumes,
It was in this practice I learned patience,
when all thoughts are flex of body,
the slight curve of torso
and abdominal reach toward shore unseen
through glistening sheets of
morning’s mosaic surface
Oct 23, 2017
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:47 AM UTC
I often think of the swimming body,
arms unfurling the rough afternoon lake
into smooth planks while stretching
through the catch,
carving mosaic reflections into
shapes reflecting glimpses of the sun
before strewn onto the surface like
broken pearl necklaces.
It was in this practice I learned patience,
in the process of the crossing
and perfection of glide,
the conclave with the lake and flow of
language between body and water
the dialogue of the skimming, rotating torso,
forehead below surface line, chin down
consummation of movement.
The body suspended
above the muddy bottom,
stretching through the round shoulder,
the square shape of the hand
with fingers slightly apart coiffing
currents,
surging naked anatomy forward.
In Autumn, the buoy clangs louder
conversing through fog
of the changing season
to lake swimmers, row on row,
blinded at their bow
reminding them of the turn,
the edge of the precipice
before cavernous depths
pilfer reason,
those masters of rhythm
turn attention to stroke of arms
away from blackness beyond sight,
where creatures dwell.
Pivoting parallel to the lakefront,
elongated through the feet,
into the legs, along the chest,
barren ******* cutting waters
connecting one shore to the next,
before absolute zero of winter sets in
the vein splitting East-West coursing
between inlets, skirting islands
and birch skinned canoes
dancing atop foamy plumes,
It was in this practice I learned patience,
when all thoughts are flex of body,
the slight curve of torso
and abdominal reach toward shore unseen
through glistening sheets of
morning’s mosaic surface
Mar 21, 2017
Mar 21, 2017 at 9:50 AM UTC
Crappie running in beds along the lit docks , bridges and abutments .. Flathead catfish bigger than a grown man at the base of the dam , Largemouth bass hitting shad like battering rams , early morning , late afternoon and darkest night .. Hardwood forest brimming colorful shores , stoic Whitetail Bucks dining on acorns , field nuts and sweet moss , Canadian geese and frozen shorebirds working her tributaries and inlets .. Smokey water silhouettes relayed by whippoorwill hymns , the first angelic beam of the morn striking her poetic surface .. Lake Jackson returning to diurnal joy , across reflective , freshwater twirling plains ...
Mar 26, 2016
Mar 26, 2016 at 8:59 PM UTC
VII
This is my end
surely this is
the end of it all
all I know is here
and though I am
young this is the end
of life as I know it
now and soon I will
see my home no more
for this is my end
here where I shelter
from all I cannot
think beyond this ending
surely the end of all
I know is here
and will be gone
(after a cine still from 1930 of a St Kllda woman)
XVIIIa
house above the hut
of shadows holds itself
against the relentless wind
on so open a shore
islands and inlets beyond
reasonable number stand
before its policies
its promontory land
Up on the third floor
light fills every corner
expelling its shadows
to the hut held
within its sight
XVIIIb
slowly the darkness
reveals less than
a shadow thrown
against a plastered wall
inside silenced from the wind
an image grows as the eyes
succumb to less than light
used to looking Suggestion
and the memory of outside
supply the rest
(two poems connected by Chris Drury’s Hut of Shadows on North Uist)
XIX
following footsteps
crisp in the sand
hour-fresh from tide-fall
now the shadows form
in the weight of press
the imprint mark
different with every
fall of limb and claw
the 3-pronged bird-foot
the sandaled human
step singular one
before another after
another until perspective
conceals and merges
into distant sand
**
silence suddenly
the ringed plovers
hold their breath
then chorus
a chirping as they wade
together in their own
reflections
the water like glass
at their feet
mirroring
movement that light
hop for a few steps onto
a slight but sturdy island
tweet then terweet
inflected upwards
a questioning call
terweet?
XX1
the taste of salt sea
in the mouth
the touch of water
thick sea-water
on the legs between toes
the sharp cold plunge
immersion envelopment
sunlight throws a cascade
of bright steps across the sea
gradually merging into a band of light
ablaze on the horizon
at the base of distant Monarchs
a silhouette of massed rock
rises from the sea crowned
by static clouds decorating the sky
gentle white ermine-soft
Oct 3, 2016
Oct 3, 2016 at 3:40 AM UTC
(Discovering my Quad-polar compartments)
But sleep never satisfies
for long. I find myself
dreaming more and more,
vivid, frightful dreams
as real as being awake
but with less control,
movies play through my mind
mirroring the day In some
****** up way,
and just like that,
Like a drug,
sleep loses its ability
to provide escape
because of tolerance.
I watch a snail move slowly
across the flagstone.
I lose track of how long
I've been watching.
Only the thin line of spit
beneath my pillow
lets me know it was
a dream.
Without escape
There is no reward,
No rejuvenation
only confusion,
and that which is
easy is not.
But this quest has
opened my eyes in more ways
than just lack of sleep.
My quad-polar discovery
has helped me identify
these quadrants of my mind.
God. Beast.
*** Love.
My quad-polar compartments.
Confused and bewildered
they will not be merged.
The god in me thinks the beast needs to be loved.
The beast in me thinks that *** is a god.
The *** in me thinks that love kills the beast.
The love in me thinks the beast is just ***
It’s the love I am most afraid of,
At least during those times when
there is a me,
a me that looks down on the quads,
but mostly that’s rare because
I never know who’s
in charge anymore.
It's such a difficult existence
when what’s theoretically
my greatest need is also
my greatest fear.
If I consider this logically
then the conclusion is clear,
that is,
my dedicated inlets
and my spiritual outlets
cannot get along.
*** and love do not co-exist.
At least not in me.
I’m either penetrating inlets
and ignoring outlets
or
seeking mysticism while
the inlets go on wanting.
I have known this for
a very long time.
Maybe if I find
a new island
I could find
a new inlet,
open the outlet
back up.
Dec 12, 2014
Dec 12, 2014 at 10:08 PM UTC