"masthead" poems
sometimes
if you stop breathing
you can hear
you can hear the sound
of the single drop of water
as it drips
onto a bit of tin
amidst the grass and the mud
or the sound of the ducks’
feathers as they play
in the eddies
or the sound of the sun
as it rises over the grey canal
kissing it to life
over treetops that are
japanese watercolours
and boats moored in the marina
memories of a time gone by
sometimes
if you stop breathing
you can feel
you can feel the breeze
on the hair of your arms
the wind as it chills your fingers
and you exhale
dragon breath
sometimes
if you stop breathing
you can feel
life
in death
sometimes
if you stop breathing
you gasp
as you take in the details
the masthead
on a boat
a dragon
with horns?
a greek god
to keep storms away?
hammered iron and blue
a totem
a good luck charm
a protective spell
sometimes
if you stop breathing
everything fades
and all we have
is the now
the single breath
pain vanishes
and all that remains
is bliss
Feb 18, 2016
Feb 18, 2016 at 3:29 AM UTC
Were every night as tonight feels now,
with you by my side, with your laughter echoing mine...
Were you captain of my ship, there'd be no need to hide
my face in the shadow of the masthead's lonely brow.
No need for cigarettes in the dark.
No concealing my haunted heart
behind smiles that tonight are honest as a vow.
Not false like in the light tomorrow will allow.
The morning brings tears that tonight are absent from my soul.
For at least tonight, there is no fear.
For at least tonight I feel whole,
and tomorrow I know will not feel the same.
And
yet
still...
Were every night as carefree and untired,
with dinner in the cabin, brothers sharing stories by the fire.
Waves lap at the barnacles; crest at the bow.
No need to hide my face from their spray in my shame;
No need for me to confess every sin by my name
Were every night as tonight feels now.
Were it that tomorrow would bring me the same.
Mar 20, 2015
Mar 20, 2015 at 9:43 PM UTC
I said "hey check out the captain", and the sailors all agreed, so we strung him to the masthead and he flapped there in the breeze.
We were sailing past the dover cliffs with neptune on our side, and I walked into the captain's cabin with the crows nest in my eyes.
The Druid winds kept up our sails with an aztec tiller man, and up from the depths came Jonah's whale as we sailed across the sands.
With the cannons spiting broken glass we passed the coasts of Africa. The amazon flowed underneath and the snow began to fall, with hail stones as big as clubs they joined us in the hull. We spent the nights in holocaust but our blood it mixed below. So we put a **** in Panama and Hawaii loomed up slow, with burlap sacks of psilocybin from the volcanoes rotting shell. The fire gushed up from underneath, we were on our way in hell.
Electric raindrops filled the sky, like a insect's buzzing din, it seemed Zues was coming with us and the light began to bend. The sun it cracked wide open and in the chain reaction's swell, our whole galactic nebula was shattered and we fell.
Only to be born again on tomorrow's distant shores, for each atomic particle was as fertile as your soil, and the motion and the friction was only nature's oil. But just as death must balance life when nature's had her fill, we probably will rise again and learn to hate and ****
Dec 4, 2015
Dec 4, 2015 at 5:10 PM UTC
An ashen late Autumn was upon us,
and in our best worn coats and sundries we--
held steadfast by a masthead of a rotting boat.
Wooden on a shore of the lake we adored.
We held still as soft deer galloped their lanks through strange
lands lifted from grounds with brick built upon brick,
wherein now were filled, not berries, but hunter's saltlick.
We ravaged a place we called our own,
We stole from the savages their home.
But we found a peace amongst their nerves,
and we were fearful of speed and we'd swerve,
if ever we found in our path one that deserved,
to have the freedom to rummage through roughage.
On this solemn lake-side we found pride in the soft light.
Because what the **** else can we do,
but to sit where once grass stood in dew,
and instead of plucking and mucking about,
no, in lieu, we sat and stared and remarked,
instead about how we've done damage we can't undo.
Aug 5, 2018
Aug 5, 2018 at 5:10 AM UTC
Blinkers of deception blocked all view
Which gave an impression verily askew
Much like a tunnel with direct vision
The peripheral objects not sighted
This be how the eye is well blighted
The optic ***** is so oft mislead
By those carrying a fraudulent masthead
We've been trapped in their shadow's vision
Unmasking them is a revelation
A clear picture of misinterpretation
Ne'er be tricked in a straight light byway
For there's always dark tones lingering
Which don't exhibit that they're loitering
Be not a mole in a blinded hallway
Sep 6, 2014
Sep 6, 2014 at 2:56 AM UTC
I feel lost inside my head
Every word I read hides a novel
You seem so close but that's not true
You dream of the man in blue
My heart leads me like a compass
Straight to you
To you
My mind tells me its wrong
But I love you
Love you
At my work my mind is split
But my heart is always true
Every time the door opens
I search for you
My house is not a home
When I'm all alone
My smile is just a guise
When my heart is weeping
The music drowns the life
That breaks my heart
Nothing else matters
Except the art
But at that final note
It all comes flooding back
With you at the masthead
All dressed in black
My heart leads me like a compass
Straight to you
To you
My mind tells me its wrong
But I love you
Love you
Jan 20, 2012
Jan 20, 2012 at 4:02 AM UTC
The howling maelstrom of wireless
Haunts the air unseen
Blue toothed demonic
It whips up white caps of restlessness
And drives sleep onto the rocks
Blowing through keyboard tickers
And screen flickers
There’s a digital mosquito hum in the rigging
And the sheets fill with an endless cacophony
Of Arabica bean buzz
Your physiognomy is a book
Rolled up like a chart in a tube
The cabin cricket in its cage
Twittering nonsense
And lusts of cute and food
And anti anti anti
Both bullies and victims at the masthead
Squeal and rage and defecate
Raw sewage dribbling down the bow
In a million billion ones and zeros
Sailors lost in foreign climes
With no purpose on land
The motley crew self-gratify
Thinking
Come the dawn we’ll all be back at sea
Not realising
That with the globe at your fingertips
Both night and day are constants
Lash yourself to the mast
Else be washed overboard
All the stars you used to sail by
Have become little more
Than dead pixels on a screen
© 2018 Steve Kelly aka kellyocs
Oct 30, 2018
Oct 30, 2018 at 9:09 PM UTC
There is no more room to wander,
within the wild, blue yonder.
All the skies and seas are dead to explore.
No new ports, forgotten resorts; a lack
of ****** shores for rich men to ravish,
in search of riches much more.
Sea-faring clime possessed on the backs of child,
rode as destiny manifest,
wrote during storm, through mild.
More words than shores coalesced.
But the words explode from me—
Like some powerful wave meant only
To wash things that should not be, away.
Every syllable hovering, quivering
At the corners of my mouth—
As they carry me to beaches where feet
walk less timid, walk with less freedom
than I could ever hope to possess.
If we must be in hope and wish for probity,
in the minds and hearts and waters at sea.
Lift from masthead our daughters and brides,
so they last instead until martrimony decree.
And when vows written in logs of Captain
are all we accomplish lead by sextant see.
All things are permissible deep in our dreams,
yet chapel bell is rung not by sexton, but me.
I am my own Captain—
Luring those splashing wanderers not to safety—
No,
I lead them to drown with me.
The extra weight needed, begged for
So that we may appear as a sixteenth century painting
Brushes stroked in the last sip of black tea
to mimic some reality
Ive only touched myself to in sleep.
We are agasp toward bottoms, and fall from heights.
Whereas one of us sinks,
the other heaves into dives.
We are without fathom,
as water stings our eyes blind.
Struggle, you cannot lack fight, it will happen
whether you wish.
We are both rats, a Captain between us,
forgoing a sinking ship.
You abhor tradition in lieu to survive.
Set it afire,
So we can watch from underneath
As through some television screen
The world we knew, we know
rise up in smoke to signal no one.
Aug 5, 2018
Aug 5, 2018 at 4:42 AM UTC
Descending
into the storage box was like seeing
a Titanic
on the bottom of the sea
I
drop
layer
by
layer
through yellowed envelopes
overflowing
photos and negatives
which darken with age
and depth
Pressure rises
pipes begin to rattle and spray
threatening
the newspaper clippings
report cards, death announcements
the fragments of genetic strands
now spread about my feet
as though they'd fallen
from a great height
On the bottom sits the old house
amazingly uncrushed, porch still unswept
of maple leaves
and Mary, witness to another world
in button shoes
astride the steps like a masthead
smiling as she
maps
my
bones
Sep 25, 2016
Sep 25, 2016 at 10:23 PM UTC
I said "hey check out the captain", and the sailors all agreed, so we strung him to the masthead and he flapped there in the breeze.
We were sailing past the dover cliffs with neptune on our side, and I walked into the captain's cabin with the crows nest in my eyes.
The Druid winds kept up our sails with an aztec tiller man, and up from the depths came Jonah's whale as we sailed across the sands.
With the cannons spiting broken glass we passed the coasts of Africa. The amazon flowed underneath and the snow began to fall, with hail stones as big as clubs they joined us in the hull. We spent the nights in holocaust but our blood it mixed below. So we put a **** in Panama and Hawaii loomed up slow, with burlap sacks of psilocybin from the volcanoes rotting shell. The fire gushed up from underneath, we were on our way in hell.
Electric raindrops filled the sky, like a insect's buzzing din, it seemed Zues was coming with us and the light began to bend. The sun it cracked wide open and in the chain reaction's swell, our whole galactic nebula was shattered and we fell.
Only to be born again on tomorrow's distant shores, for each atomic particle was as fertile as your soil, and the motion and the friction was only nature's oil. But just as death must balance life when nature's had her fill, we probably will rise again and learn to hate and ****
Jan 13, 2022
Jan 13, 2022 at 12:57 PM UTC