"kelp" poems
there’s a barnacle scar
deeply ingrained
on the basalt stack
at mark thirty two
whispering summer winds
scented oil
cotton and roe
drift
as waves brush
and shape
the sandstone shore
the briny air
and lost erratic
set a tone to this
pollyanna portrait
it's andrews undulations
and gifted benches
its concessions
and traces of the barry burn
its sculpted driftwood
and sanko lines
make this picture
almost perfect
children play
as venom spews
from the caterwaul pair
those odd looking mates
casting smiles
with arrested despair
settling shots
swiping bugs
dipping and darting
as photo men
and muscles
and long neck seabirds
make their turn
the hunched hoody
and his sorted sidekick
get their fill
(of moss and rubble ~ chubby and kelp)
nice to meet your acquaintance
the pho man would say
an odd drop
and ironic turn
from those horrific corners
of timeless desperation
down by cannon bridge
harbor seals
and carriage horse
are fronted by
raven shade
jolly tides pause
in quiet bays
(with curious looters
and *** pickers)
sand merchants
and field totems
all streamed by the light
cirrus strands
blanket the
outer edge
hovering craft
and shimmering willows
bolt the evening frame
blood orange
and tethered
with a filtered glare
bottle-nose dolphins
and seabirds
(and shifting tides)
are all settling in
for the long night stay
Mar 9, 2017
Mar 9, 2017 at 11:21 PM UTC
No sprouted wheat and soya shoots
And Brussels in a cake,
Carrot straw and spinach raw,
(Today, I need a steak).
Not thick brown rice and rice pilaw
Or mushrooms creamed on toast,
Turnips mashed and parsnips hashed,
(I'm dreaming of a roast).
Health-food folks around the world
Are thinned by anxious zeal,
They look for help in seafood kelp
(I count on breaded veal).
No smoking signs, raw mustard greens,
Zucchini by the ton,
Uncooked kale and bodies frail
Are sure to make me run
to
***** of pork and chicken thighs
And standing rib, so prime,
Pork chops brown and fresh ground round
(I crave them all the time).
Irish stews and boiled corned beef
and hot dogs by the scores,
or any place that saves a space
For smoking carnivores.
21.8k
---
I've done some research
On cancer's cause
Western medicine, Dr Oz.
They don't have answers, I'm afraid.
And the cure is in what GOD made.
Cancer's vector? A simple virus.
A parasite and a fungus.
Candida overgrowth.
Radiation. Stress.
We all face this in the West.
So are there answers? Well. Let's see.
Tell me if you don't agree.
Sodas should go down the drain
They have sugar or aspertame.
Sugar feeds cancer. Cut it out!
I KNOW that this will make you pout
But you can find nuts a tasty treat
Find some that you like to eat!
Say NO to coffee. All caffeine.
Eat kale and other leafy greens.
If you want nutrition saved
Cut the cord on your microwave!
They watered plants
with water nuked
They died. Nutrition down the tubes.
So no TV dinners. Processed foods.
No fruits or veggies grown GMOs.
WHEAT is bad! And on it goes.
So it may cost a little more?
Shop your local health food store!
What does it matter?
What's cancer's cost?
And your life will not be lost!
If you tire of reading this
There may be important
things you miss... READ ON!
NATURAL REMEDIES FOR CANCER
Blackstrap molasses. 1 tablespoon
Baking soda. 1 teaspoon
Mix with a glass of water and drink.
(Baking soda should be found at
a health food store)
Blackstrap molasses can also be used
topically for skin cancer.
Tincture of the husk of the
Black walnut nut. 2 drops
Tincture of clove. 2 drops
Tincture of wormwood. 2 drops
Mix in a glass of water and drink. Add lemon and honey.
It'll taste better.
IMPORTANT!
DO NOT USE TAP
OR BOTTLED WATER!
Get distilled water and add
Minerals in liquid form.
Your health food store will have this.
There are many herbs and spices
Which help.
There's iodine in common kelp.
Turmeric
Cucumin
etc.
VERY POWERFUL
Soursop tea. Green tea sans caffeine
Fresh vegetables of the rainbow...
Colors are viamins!
Vitamin supplements
Especially B-17
If you can't find these in your
Health food store ask them to order.
Or go on Amazon and order.
Sep 26, 2015
Sep 26, 2015 at 4:07 PM UTC
I have fallen
I won't be there
to break the waves,
to dust the dirt
with bare skin
off your face.
You either
wither and die
or dance with
the coral.
Catch the sun
with your eyes
break the surface
while your body
sings.
Swim with
the kelp beds
or tangle beneath
the hooks &
the strings.
Sep 18, 2014
Sep 18, 2014 at 3:57 PM UTC
Royalty
She dwells in the sea- green palace of her father
The mermaid swam alone on blustery days
The seed of the water god Neptune and a river nymph
Her beauty blind the sun and his morning rays
On days of boredom
She swam with the white dolphins
Riding high on heaving rolling waves
Other times with Omura's whales dive deep
Or play in a red coral reef bay
Tickling blue ***** that walked on the sandy bottom
Exploring the dark octopus caves
Floating often with the deadly jellyfish
Keeping her scaled tail very still
Or wiggling through the raging currents of the ocean
With the graceful ribbon eels
The day passed passed
She became weary
Came time to rest her head
Returned to the flowing green kelp palace
And did sleep on a starfish bed
All Rights Reserved @Tammy M Darby August 2013.
All Material Stored in Author Base
Aug 10, 2013
Aug 10, 2013 at 6:43 PM UTC
MY LONG TREK ON WRONG LEGS, BEG DYNAMITE FROM HUSH DUDS
DAMP CANNONS BILLOW IN THE EAST WIND, LIKE FLACCID DRAGONS
GAGGING ON IRON APPLES
I SURGE IMPOTENT IN MY WRATH, SUNBATHING BY AFTERGLOW
HEROICALLY CONTAINED.
DISMANTLED...
I CRAFT THE WITHERING OF MY FURY
WITH A STEADY HAND; AND A JADED HEART
STARK BLIGHT, DRAINS MY CUP OF THUNDER, WHERE MY LIGHTNING CLOTS
WHERE SOLID DARK
HARKENS
MY YELLOW SUN HARDENS; LIKE AN UNSTRUCK COIN
BLANK IN MY POCKET
SHARDS OF DULL ACHE... UNSHARPEN
MY RED SEA
DEPARTS
MY KELP BEDS
DISMAYED.
Jun 24, 2013
Jun 24, 2013 at 7:03 PM UTC
Silhouettes emerge from the night lunar tide
lives still wriggling in their net
ghostly figures from the sea silken wide
reaping riches from the waves in spate.
The night a luminous smile wears
the belly is fired up for a bite
dried leaves would burn under stars
brewing another day under moonlight.
Mariners when not venturing into deep sea
release passions on the shallow shelf
harvest hope though the catch is measly
breathing in the winds the aroma of kelp.
I feel having long belonged to this place
wading breakers in the phosphorus' glow
gathering in my net a strange happiness
craving home when the tide is low.
Jun 27, 2017
Jun 27, 2017 at 9:21 AM UTC
Three times now
when I have sought solace in solitude
over the headland on the rocky shore
I have displaced my insistent inner voice
with a simple quest:
"I will find a starfish".
And each time I have done this,
gingerly rockhopping away from it all
towards the kelp-caressed wavelets
I have found one
under the first stone I turn over.
But no matter how diligently
I continue the search
I have never found a second.
Oct 28, 2012
Oct 28, 2012 at 8:57 AM UTC
Something awful happened late last night,
And here I lie awake at six AM
Upon the sand of Santa Monica.
The cars drive by, but I don’t notice them.
I used up all my gas to get away
From the ****** pond on my bathroom rug.
It’s more than bleach can handle and I’m scared
That I’ve found a more seductive drug.
Fish intestines line the pier and I
Feel no misery for gutless souls.
The rocks are caked in birdshit, kelp and shells
And, as if in mourning, the cormorant calls.
Upon the rusty handrails, seagulls gossip
Just like feathered girls with brains, persisting
To trumpet my depravity in savage squawks,
And to harass the rest of us for existing.
The white-wimpled, cruel, sadistic nuns
Choose an injured sea lion as their prey.
Cowardly, they flee at his sharp barks–
It’s guts that will decide who wins today.
***** creep over the brown-furred body.
Fighting for its life, it bites the shell
And kills its fellow lifeform. When given
The chance, I’ll defend myself as well.
Aug 24, 2012
Aug 24, 2012 at 1:50 AM UTC
I wish I were stranded on a tropical island
A tropical island with you
You could make art from coconuts and starfish
Yeah, coconuts and starfish might be a good place to start
And I could build a crude instrument
Out of a conch shell and driftwood
And tightly roll a papaya leaf to use for a string
Or two
Then I could play and you could sing
We wouldn't want for anything
Serenading each other by the light of the moon...
Every evening we could snuggle underneath the stars
You could be Venus, I could be Mars
We could lay our differences aside (except the good ones)
I'm safe in you, you're safe in me,
No need to hide
I wish I were stranded on a tropical island
A tropical island with you
And we'd bake clams in the hot, hot sand
Under the afternoon Sun
And brew a crazy chowder using sea salt and kelp (help!)
Then we'd make love on the beach as the water nips at our toes
Under the setting sun when the day is done
By a waterfall I'm calling you...
Sep 30, 2013
Sep 30, 2013 at 11:08 PM UTC
Orcas in Puget Sound
Along the road, abandoned wild apple trees bend
with their heavy loads, dusty skirts of blackberry bushes
purpling fingers, piercing flesh
mouths ringed with berry juice, vampires all.
Along San Juan Island salmon leap clear
out of the briny water, just yards ahead of their predators,
Orcas, dorsal fins curving shiny black, sluicing and slicing
the surface like sharpened knives
They have bred with one another for 10,000 years
trolled these waters through famine, earthquakes, world wars
through shifting continents, glacial avalanches,
through the extinction of whole civilizations.
Standing on a cliff, my daughter and I
watch the Orcas churning the water - studies in grace
the largest gem on the necklace of a great food chain
and when we sleep we too chase
the great King Salmon of our deepest dreams,
the fathers we lost, the currents that bear along children
Translucent jellyfish, palm sized, breath below
sideways exhale, convulsive inhale
umbrellas opening and closing a thousand years or more
sliding through forests of brown kelp where mollusks cling
We have clung like this to one another, with my body
thrown over hers for protection and her exhaling away from me
If Mama Orca keeps her young close, so will I
If there are salmon to chase and harbor seals to command, so we will
Arcing in the late August sky
slapping and parting the surface, over and over
the whales, lords of the Sound, swim in our brains as we sleep
sparkle against blackening waters
You are of my body from my body cleaving there for 10,000 years
Whatever quarrels there are on land vaporize
In the presence of these creatures,
arcing against all that is temporal, vicious, small,
studies in power and grace
The tide pulls out, skimming across rocks and oysters in their muddy beds
But this need to care for you remains as big as an Orca
your appetite for adventure as voracious
and I watch you, my child, disappearing with summer
into high school, into womanhood, into
the salty, light-dappled ocean
Jul 15, 2012
Jul 15, 2012 at 4:15 PM UTC
There is a place in this world where we all belong
Where we can be as free as the wind and as reckless as the waves
We could sleep on the sand and walk the shores
Where the water will love us and we will care for it
Where we can swim forever into the depths of the sea
And explore the places where people have never been
And share secrets with the coves and have a family of miles of seawater
See creatures of other worlds and beautiful kelp forests
That’s where I would be forever and ever
I wish I could be there, live there
Soon I will be at the sea and live with the
Creatures
Soon that will happen
Feb 7, 2015
Feb 7, 2015 at 12:09 PM UTC
Finally it is done.
For months I have been
collecting ingredients
for the magical elixir -
home grown ginger and rosemary,
fresh organic garlic, onions and lemon,
finely chopped jalapeno pepper,
powdered turmeric,
Ceylon cinnamon,
tulsi, kelp and black pepper.
What eluded me was the
pungent, fresh horseradish,
unexpectedly absent in our stores
and farmers markets,
until a birthday trip to New York,
when we found the massive roots
in a Russian market.
And, once properly chopped
and shredded and zested,
all is covered and bathed
in organic apple cider vinegar,
a superfood in itself,
where it will draw out the
healing constituents
of each vital ingredient,
creating a powerhouse of wellness.
And now we wait.
Four to eight weeks
of shaking the jars every day
before we drain the lot,
run the pulp through a juice extractor
and add the final touch ...
local honey, raw and unfiltered,
adding sweetness and
its own preserving power,
along with a strong boost to health.
A long time to wait
for this Nectar of the Gods,
but so very worth it:
a shot of this each day
and colds and flu stand no chance -
bacteria and virus alike
overwhelmed -
say goodbye to illness.
Let us now give thanks
to our grandmothers
and all the lay herbalists
of generations long past,
for through their efforts,
our own knowledge
is greatly enriched.
We stand on the shoulders of giants.
5July2015
Jul 6, 2015
Jul 6, 2015 at 9:19 PM UTC
1
Grey sky greyer sea
a litter of rocks balance
coat bright hat blue mittens striped
as on these November steps
you collect the gifts of the ebb tide
2
Glint green this living tapestry echoes
Jilly’s field with tractor not Devon
but salt-flats rocky revetments moorland rising
a map crossed by a chiromatic line
our destiny marked out on this concrete wall?
3
Beached clinkered double-ender
a bay-courser sjekte strand-crunched
fit once for Viking raiders two abreast
now daubed with tin ends of patriotic paint
a sea-steed hobbled hard on the shore
4
Bow faced a sea helmet thrice rope strapped
slow moulded over the boat builder’s ribbanded jig
a spanglehelm of wood
curved sheer straked plank bilged a tuck stern
raising its proud head seaward
5
Viewed from the air a map rolls out
north to the tilted curve of the horizon’s rim
cloud scattered mountained red
betwixt seas sun chalked wine-stained a volcanic isthmus
provokes desert the western waste land of a brooding city
6
Oh face of ropes knot eyed!
you blue cheeked wide smiler
wild wild your head of hair
beachcombed and splayed
wrapped on the sternest post
7
She sewed sugar kelp on the sea shore
a sporophyte with sheltered frond
strap-like stem stiff and smooth
of the species saccharina a spring-tide
stalk set among substrates shells and stones
8
I the camera turned and caressed
by her slight fingers (the pinky raised)
my viewfinder close to her blue grey eye / I
focus on this kelp-needled novelty feel her breath
wait for the thumb press the electronic click
9
Here is the beach walked in darkness
the fishermen shadows against the moonstruck ebb
fingers laced the sea’s breath in our ears
wave upon wave un-folding on the sand and later
we unfold then draw back in love’s relentlessness
Sep 15, 2012
Sep 15, 2012 at 4:09 AM UTC
.
The moon undresses you, little bird,
Your eyes are indigo skies without stars,
Your breath is summer grass after shower.
How you hold your arms before the night,
A lance of milky sheen and flailing bliss,
Your arms arrest as they softly surrender
And your ******* overflow in moist shores
Of white sand and shells, little ears to kiss,
I am drowning in your curves on the waves
From the sea, delirious with eye of moon,
Drunk with wild ocean as it consumes me,
Your hair is new grassland to run through,
Windy as a child breaking for the beach,
I latch my fingers to yours like driftwood
Tangled in kelp, the salt we share, steeps,
Is **** and deep and our lips are shucked
Oysters, blind, iridescent, sliding with eyes
Into the famished throat of ***** heavens.
.
Feb 5, 2018
Feb 5, 2018 at 7:58 PM UTC
On one of the myriad bays
along the Maine coast. Keep the holocaust
at bay I said to Dave because
you’ll spend all day gathering
2,000 calories and still be miserable hungry.
An undiminished population of humans is risible.
Black spruce and balsam fir,
you can eat the inner bark
in a starvation emergency.
There’s plenty of Cornus—bunchberry—
each orange pith around the stone
worth maybe a quarter calorie.
Lots of sarsparilla but the fruits
not out yet and to date I have not
savored one. Let’s see—dandelion
of course and huckleberry but
the most important source of sustenance
would be seaweed.
Learn your mushrooms! for the protein.
Accept the situation
come the apocalypse.
I struggle against my insignificance
but it would be better to struggle
against my ignorance.
Less effortlessness, more fishermanliness.
That’s the lesson of this Maine vacation
there’s a lot you can eat when in need—
the hips of roses and the pips of grasses.
And an endless supply of seaweed—
bladderwrack, dulse, kelp and thin green lettuce.
Sep 12, 2023
Sep 12, 2023 at 6:09 AM UTC
The Stream
Carries the mighty twig along
Through its winding turns
Gets stuck under a rock
But not for long
When the fisherman comes
And pushes it to the dock
There it hangs out
For awhile
Making new Friends
Near the wet branch pile
Some are thick
Some are thin
Some are cracked
And some are its twin
A sudden big splash
The kids have jumped in
Off the twig goes
Where it ends up
It does not know
Entwining with another twig
Around each lily pad
Like perfectly aligned dancing feet
That must have been meant to meet
Together they move swiftly through the water
Stuck underneath some large kelp
Its liked friend is there to help
Over the mini waterfalls they flow
Never really know which will let go
Eventually it starts to pour
And a wave crashes them to a shore
Together they are not no more
One transcends to a useful walking stick along the ridge
The other becomes part sandcastle bridge
Stopped serving their purpose
They did not
At midnight they are tossed back in
Rough waters ahead
They start to spin
Mighty twigs gave it their best shot
And then they began to slowly rot
Sep 4, 2018
Sep 4, 2018 at 6:06 PM UTC
There’s a dark grotto
Under the sea
With shelves and shelves
Of bottles
Clear, glass bottles
All of my secrets
A carefully watched castle
The middle of a concentric series of impassable walls
Surrounded by a forest of kelp
With razor-sharp teeth
And then the narwhals
The narwhal guards
Armed to the teeth with halibut-slicing knives
Their three-meter horns
Gleaming in the moonlight
Guarding
All of my secrets
Skeletons, trespassers of yore,
Strewn about the seafloor
Bones picked clean
By the scavenging *****
No one can enter
No one can leave
The grotto with the shelves
Shelves and shelves of clear, glass bottles
All of my secrets
But as for the *****
For the first time in centuries
The sunlight warms the waters
Melts the kelp
Kisses the narwhals
Buries the bones and torments the scavengers
Clearing away the darkness
A nonstop route through the castle
Protecting
All of my secrets
The tendrils of photons creep along
Wary
Ready for a fight
The grotto growls menacingly
Unguarded
For the first time in centuries
But upon the first touch -
Light meets stone -
The sea shudders
Ecstasy
And in repayment for salvation
Out come the bottles
Floating to the surface
Bathing in the light
All of my secrets
May 19, 2010
May 19, 2010 at 3:20 PM UTC
Redds shine like new nickels on the dark river bottom,
salmon have returned to spawn the Deschutes,
navigating by primal memories written in DNA,
an internal Tom-Tom GPS wired in their brains.
Watching them struggle up the ladder,
consumed with a drive to leave offspring,
they are herculean athletes battling
the current and the inexorable pull of gravity.
Were these the fry I helped to seed four years ago?
A Squaxin woman told me once,
ghosts of her Coastal Salish ancestors
ride the salmon out to sea and home again.
Roe in these redds dream also of the sea,
their salty eyes and nostrils perceiving
spirits in secret claret-red kelp beds.
The waters ask only to be haunted again.
Feb 20, 2012
Feb 20, 2012 at 5:20 PM UTC
Trying to steal that pearl from your mouth.
But as your name says, you shut me out.
I then get tossed in the undercurrent.
You offer not a hand, but a laugh.
I drift alone thinking of what I can.
I the seahorse, and you the clam.
Feb 8, 2011
Feb 8, 2011 at 4:56 PM UTC
Night comes
r
o l l i
n g
down again
in painted coats
of thick onyx
clouding my vision
as if a brightly-striped
cuttlefish,
sister of squid
has enveloped me
in its
dark liquid
sea ink
an opaque vapor
for protection,
a shimmering
sheild against
disillusionment
pain of potential
loss
endless strands
of longing
knotting in my
hair like kelp
keeping me rooted
to the sea floor,
feet ensconced in
the soft squish
of muck and earth
Miraculously,
I breathe,
as if a sea nympth,
a mermaid
holding on to
the silvery scales
of her reality
indigo-dipped
in deepest iridescence
blending with fronds
of vibrant greens
and I am floating
within a vast membrane
of brine
somehow nuturing,
liquid cushion
of womb-water
letting it slake
the piquancy of thirst
that bursts my tongue
into succulence
Spiked in sea stars
like thorny crowns,
I reach out to
discover new textures
puncture the dark
with my fingers
enfold those waters
to me,
letting them
rock the soul
of my soul
the heart
of the seed
of my heart
and allow my
sonar, as powerful
as a whale's
encompassing call
to surge up
through nautical miles
of ocean depths,
buoyed through layers
of waves
up unto
the winds
that ride,
ever-tenderly,
the surface
of
the
dawn
Sep 12, 2016
Sep 12, 2016 at 3:21 PM UTC
The fish, like people, swimming in sync.
All swimming around a tank disguised as magic- a world pretending to be beautiful.
The only difference is the sense of indifferent certainty.
The fish completely accept how small they are in the myriad of birth, death and evolution.
We are doomed to question.
I feel that they are accepting of futility rather than ignorant of it, as believed by most.
The sharks are the most magnificent, they have power to destroy yet they live through peace- that is the most beautiful phenomenon of all.
Most of us, all of them, seem unbothered by this perpetual routine.
My eyes begin to mirror the contents of the salty tank, filling with magical mystery.
He echoed my thoughts. The boy I am completely inlove with kissed me under a sky of turtles and whispering kelp.
That moment exists with the few that convince me there is more than an ancient, repetitive cycle.
He is alive with me. Believes that I am more than the half-life I am doomed to live. Always my first love to have awakened my belief in grace, my craving to live in the unconquerable light.
Teal glow, shark shadows and moon-cold kisses.
May 28, 2015
May 28, 2015 at 10:46 AM UTC
MEMORIES OF SAND
I gave up sweeping that year
Like a penance
As sand permeated
Everything in my condo
Clung to my scalp and feet
Blew in with the fog and landed
In my tub, between my sheets, the sink, the carpet
Gritted between my teeth in the early hours
When i would reach for her still
Before the memory would detonate around me that she didn't come.
I would follow you anywhere.
Morphed into
I can't.
I hate those dagger give-up words.
Unlike the sand
I reviled in coaxing the beach closer still
And sand blurred the boundaries of my life
Inside. Outside.
Past. Present.
Old. New.
I could pull the blanket of crashing waves around me in hypnotizing hues
Breathe in the turquoise or gray or navy blue
Of the mecurial moods of the sea.
Each morning ritual of coffee and perching 8 foot tall on the sea wall studying the swells and tides
I could palpate the energy of my spirit rising around the waves
Curling and mixing as
Aqua-purple-red dragonflies hovered at my veranda hibiscus that murmers truths
I do no want to hear.
And in all that aloneness settled a great quiet still emptiness.
Because I couldn't cry I'd go diving in the persistent waves of salt and kelp.
The cold violated my eardrums and for a moment I'd go spinning-disoriented and weightless-suspended
Surrender without air as the Pacific held me buyouant
Only surfacing to breathe like a Baptism. I was ok being alone.
And sometimes I wasn't.
As the sand exfoliated my old self I'd grasp hold of the new wonders of phosphorescent tide under a harvest moon
And the fading memory of her would rise like a helium balloon I held down for 2 hrs and 4 weeks at Surfers Point in Ventura
Then let her go into the abyss of acceptance
Like granting permission to the invading sand
Gathering like whispers
In disappearing corners of her absence
And leaned into the redefinition of myself:
Barefoot. Sandy. Expectant.
The memory of sand.
Apr 23, 2018
Apr 23, 2018 at 2:19 PM UTC
So I was swimming in the ocean
the pacific
it was summer, nearly September but that ocean is always frigid
I wanted to swim
So I went in with all my clothes on and the water so so cold
I tried to imitate the body surfers and dive under the waves
but I got caught in the tide and pulled under
One beat
my heart pumps out
the sand the salt
the cold
I try to swim
up to
breathe
I hit the bottom
Where am I?
For a second that stretched into an hour
I thought I was going to die
With my mouth full of saltwater
And my hair waving like the kelp fronds
I didn’t of course
I found the sky
Never have I been so glad to see the clouds
And the sun
Nov 29, 2013
Nov 29, 2013 at 12:48 AM UTC