"pilings" poems
[On my birthday]
At low tide like this how sheer the water is.
White, crumbling ribs of marl protrude and glare
and the boats are dry, the pilings dry as matches.
Absorbing, rather than being absorbed,
the water in the bight doesn't wet anything,
the color of the gas flame turned as low as possible.
One can smell it turning to gas; if one were Baudelaire
one could probably hear it turning to marimba music.
The little ocher dredge at work off the end of the dock
already plays the dry perfectly off-beat claves.
The birds are outsize. Pelicans crash
into this peculiar gas unnecessarily hard,
it seems to me, like pickaxes,
rarely coming up with anything to show for it,
and going off with humorous elbowings.
Black-and-white man-of-war birds soar
on impalpable drafts
and open their tails like scissors on the curves
or tense them like wishbones, till they tremble.
The frowsy sponge boats keep coming in
with the obliging air of retrievers,
bristling with jackstraw gaffs and hooks
and decorated with bobbles of sponges.
There is a fence of chicken wire along the dock
where, glinting like little plowshares,
the blue-gray shark tails are hung up to dry
for the Chinese-restaurant trade.
Some of the little white boats are still piled up
against each other, or lie on their sides, stove in,
and not yet salvaged, if they ever will be, from the last bad storm,
like torn-open, unanswered letters.
The bight is littered with old correspondences.
Click. Click. Goes the dredge,
and brings up a dripping jawful of marl.
All the untidy activity continues,
awful but cheerful.
2.8k
When ever I touch the ground that’s hot
With the sole of my foot that’s bare,
I never fail to recall a time,
And the memories lingering there,
Of a day when I was just a boy,
Beneath equatorial skies,
And the tactic used to keep me indoors
While the missionaries rested their eyes.
My mother was sick with malaria
The curse of the tropic zone,
And while my dad was away on the hunt
Their station became our home.
And after lunch when the sky was hot
And the morning’s work was done
They took my shoes away from me
To keep me out of the sun.
The veranda air was still as a grave,
Not a sound to could be heard outside
Save the click-click-click from the beetles
And the grasshoppers jumping to hide.
Or the scratching scaly slither,
Of a snake on the flowerbed verge,
Or the distant cry of the crested crane,
These are the sounds that merge.
The sight of the distant Koru hills
Shimmering in the haze
Beyond the frangipani trees
Return once more to my gaze,
And the prickly spiky Crown of Thorns
That lined the garden ways,
These are the sights that ribbon back
From my early Kenyan days.
The smell of the room was a mixture
Of scents on the garden air,
And creosote coming up through the floor
From the pilings under there,
And paraffin from the pressure lamps
Which hissed as they gave us light.
With the hint of oil of pyrethrum
Sprayed round the eves at night.
The step to my door should I venture
At noon was as hot as a stove,
The soil on the paths and driveway
Would burn if ever I strove.
And the thorns in the earth would pr ick me
As I cautiously picked my way through
To the shade of the frangipani tree,
From there I took in the view.
So, when ever I touch the ground that’s hot
With the sole of my foot that’s bare,
I never fail to recall a time,
And the memory lingering there,
Of a day when I was just a boy,
Where the images I find,
Set smells and sights and sounds of
Africa sizzling in my mind.
Redding, California July 4th 2005 temperature 105° Fahrenheit
May 11, 2017
May 11, 2017 at 4:32 PM UTC
Below is the first of two poems inspired by this piece of music, this one from a few years ago, in the midst of my divorce. The second, the better of the two, is:
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/pachelbels-canon/
The music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kllZlF6mB2s&feature;=youtube_gdata_player
~~~~
Bereft of words,
one more time,
concussed by the hammering of
cacophonous silences
disabling my thought processes
In vanity,
for when denied,
Le Poet-Poseur angrily asks:
Did not Mary
have her cherries
by command?^
But when the trees bow to me,
the collective of leaves mockingly
whisper sweet nadas, baby.
each leaf wraps my tongue,
in a sushi compote of sand,
"hush-a-bye, baby boy poet"
June chilled.
But not chilling
Today, on a overcast Saturday,
forces have mogged^^ me on,
transmogrified into a
Seventh Day Non-Inventist,
the creativity disrupters
Sadly,
Amazon doesn't sell,
original poems for redistribution
Pilings of papers,
variant demanders re my
labors past and future,
**** work-product of
teams of lawyers & harlots
Four years on, demanding now,
300 files subpoenaed,
need I say, they want me to re-tour my life my cuntry,
once more
Dummies!
these esquires ****** for hire,
my greatest invention,
my poetry,
they'll n'ere posses
cause I give it away,
domain denied
In need of a ****** shot,
drink repeatedly from the
Kanon by Pachelbel,
cannons of human-law
surmounted by the one divine
This note,
the work product of
Pachelbel & Lipstadt,
harmony restoration,
a shared refuge,
a shared refute
Welcome friend to
a place that cannot be
bought, seized, sold
Pleasure thyself with each
note, scale repeated
Though the reign of the heavens
doth suffer violence, and
violent men do take it by force,^^^
peace and pardon,
earnest reward of
poets who lived gently,
giving gentle, freely away
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 7:32 AM UTC
all resolution is slippery,
the firmer the foundation,
with pilings sent deep,
the swifter the undermining.
there is an inertia
in drawing breath that becomes
an immovable focus intent
on repetition alone, always
leading to itself; call it
the myth of life, for this
temporal existence stands
far from our true being.
so says the sage, planting crops
so says the priest, spinning comfort
so says the banker, theatre tickets in hand
so says the poet, eyeing his words
so says the parent, with blind instruction
stand mute before your needs
awareness doesn’t amount to much,
nor does anything else.
Mar 6, 2013
Mar 6, 2013 at 9:16 PM UTC
The water laps the dock
Giving sweet nose, bay redolence flown by the cracking whips of tuffed air,
Listen to the roiling and embrace the soaring perfume
Drumming the song of the deep against the old trees, now pilings
Old trees now legs
That want to kick and splash and enjoy their bosom neighbor
And run into the depths
But are sadly anchored .
Hear the tern’s silence broken
while the fish break chains of water entrapment
Breaking surface, momentarily flying and shattering back home.
Splash, they all splash.
Splash the tree, splash the silence, splash the sky
Splash is the serenity
Splash is the soothing commotion of the dock.
Jan 23, 2017
Jan 23, 2017 at 7:10 PM UTC
A Winter Ship
At this wharf there are no grand landings to speak of.
Red and orange barges list and blister
Shackled to the dock, outmoded, gaudy,
And apparently indestructible.
The sea pulses under a skin of oil.
A gull holds his pose on a shanty ridgepole,
Riding the tide of the wind, steady
As wood and formal, in a jacket of ashes,
The whole flat harbor anchored in
The round of his yellow eye-button.
A blimp swims up like a day-moon or tin
Cigar over his rink of fishes.
The prospect is dull as an old etching.
They are unloading three barrels of little *****
The pier pilings seem about to collapse
And with them that rickety edifice
Of warehouses, derricks, smokestacks and bridges
In the distance. All around us the water slips
And gossips in its loose vernacular,
Ferrying the smells of cod and tar.
Farther out, the waves will be mouthing icecakes —-
A poor month for park-sleepers and lovers.
Even our shadows are blue with cold.
We wanted to see the sun come up
And are met, instead, by this iceribbed ship,
Bearded and blown, an albatross of frost,
Relic of tough weather, every winch and stay
Encased in a glassy pellicle.
The sun will diminish it soon enough:
Each wave-tip glitters like a knife.
Feb 16, 2015
Feb 16, 2015 at 10:52 PM UTC
<>
11:03 Sun Sep 20 2020
2nd Day Rosh Hashana 5781
S.I., N.Y.
**when I was twenty years younger, I wrote oft introspectively,
nowadays, today, provoked by the High Holy Day, the New Year,**
it is my only filter, lens, and this solitary perspective that this moment affords, permits, demands, commands, insists on,
prepared by this confession, so that I may better return to the union of my divine spark, unify body and soul, recover my true self,
by acknowledging that I am
not beholden to anyone,
therefore, thereby,
beholden to everyone
how inconsistently wonderful that additional experience, alive in a time of upheavals, pushes me past the first stanza, where most often, my poems, prayers, go to rest uneasy, incomplete, only to be buried alive in me.
Yet, here I am stuttering, sputtering, words that come unexpectedly!
I have reached a second stanza, with the ending well sighted, nearby. The collective, overlaid wake of each passing boat, finger pointing, a road line for following, to a larger directive, a river emptying into a great ocean, birthplace & graveyard
premature celebration as it’s weeks till I return to this poem-in-progress on a bleak week, the winterized grays have dominated, the freshness of sunlight is just an occasional peekaboo.
The larger directive now suppressed, the pilings of damp brown leaves, multi-message; funeral. mounds of good days gone to hell, the inward perspective has returned me to a deep, dark place.
(Stutter, stutter, each day asseverates solemnly with tinges of rancor, no, no, no, still no answers yet, the second and third stanzas are ******** suns of no man.)
Dec 19, 2020
Dec 19, 2020 at 9:42 AM UTC
I caught a tremendous fish
. . . . . . . .
And I let the fish go.
—Elizabeth Bishop
All the people are old people.
Older than me.
Granddad took me fishing
with one of his friends.
They said we’d catch flounder.
They killed the engine
near the bridge pilings.
The lines stayed slack
until a red and white
floater fell below
the bay’s polluted waves.
I thought I felt a flounder
heaving on the hook.
I reeled it up—
a fish,
cylindrical and silver.
Alert, black eyes peered
at me. He floundered
against the skiff’s side
with a barbed hook inside
his young, unscarred mouth.
The old men laughed:
flounder are flat
and brown.
He was small
and nothing special—
not a flounder.
But they didn't let him go.
They ground my catch up
into a pink paste, spotted
with specs of broken bone.
We threw the pieces off the boat
to chum the water.
Jul 22, 2014
Jul 22, 2014 at 2:53 AM UTC
#
This bridge is faulty
there is dry-rot taunting
the girders
Its spandrels:
all knobby-kneed..
Its pseudo-elaborate trusswork,
as if designed
by a lonely drunk
It's pilings.. questionable
Its deckwork, treacherous.
Its abutment--
*aw, **** me..*
its crumbling.
. .
If we cross over
under the lie of darkness
we won't be so afraid..
*But these structural-flaws,
when revealed by the sun
are so incredibly intriguing.*
Let's take that step
and see if it holds us.
#
Oct 21, 2019
Oct 21, 2019 at 9:31 PM UTC
The boats in the harbor
flirt with the pilings,
their sails have trapped
nothing
and are flaccid,
the gulls scream at the masts,
scream while they lift
their spindly legs
and tiny feet
escaping
the noiselessness.
I sit with the sun
as it bursts
and the cirrus clouds,
like cotton,
are filled with blood
or tears,
or some brutal combination
of both,
as the needles
poke through the house
and the sun
is pushed out.
Feb 11, 2012
Feb 11, 2012 at 11:34 AM UTC
Rage received is like heavy sea
Crashing against the rocks upon which stands a lighthouse,
The waves build up as they reach the shallows,
Steepening and rearing,
Building ire and power until
Smashing over and over
Against the rock and the edifice,
Obliterating any view of the tower
And the rock,
But this lighthouse is indeed built on rock,
With pilings driven deep and secure in
Faith in what lies behind the waves,
Knowlege that the storm will pass,
The sun will shine once more
And even as the salt water and vitriol
Do their worst,
Above it that light still shines out,
A message of love and security,
And these seas which crash into the rock
Were built up by the wind of actions
And words poorly founded,
In the true ocean there will always be
Another storm and another calm,
But rage can find peace now
Because the cause is calm,
The cause is kind,
The cause is gentle
And it holds you gently in my arms
Nov 29, 2023
Nov 29, 2023 at 6:02 AM UTC
First Boat
*first boat off the island @ 5:40 am,
the sun, savvy and knowledgeable
makes sunrise @ 5:14 am for ‘late’ is
not an adjective extant in its stellar lexicon
a safety check, sunlight invades every crack,
pilings vested & secured, ferry engine hums a
warming, morning cranking tune, a sailors
favorite from the global seamen’s hymnal
those early morning voyagers, who are exchanging,
one island for another, note their coffee steaming up
coordinates with haze, burning off, all to see the first
waves come to rock them voyagers to “all awaken”
sunlight then slow spreads its envision, from the Heights
over to Mashomack, rousing, disturbing, nudging the
remaining, for there is work, living aplenty, we who stay
to tend to the most appropriately named isle in the world*
6/12/21
Silver Beach
Shelter Island, New York
Jun 12, 2021
Jun 12, 2021 at 3:48 PM UTC
Sometimes, I thought your eyes looked waterlogged,
wet enough to pour floods of biblical
proportion. I knew you as an ocean;
you slipped through knobby fingers with each pulse.
You growled like waves, and growling, you beat salt
into sunburn with the ferocity
of three thousand hurricanes—no more, no
less. My palm fronds will always sway for you.
But you never swayed, stayed, or even said
what you meant as your whitecap words washed blind
over coral. You stung though, full of bone
shards and plastic. Let’s face it, you’re filthy.
You smell like oil and death. Your rotting weeds
strangle the pilings of flimsy gray docks.
May 7, 2014
May 7, 2014 at 11:56 PM UTC
I remember the summer
of 2009. Before the world
turned itself inside out.
Before everything crashed
into everything else.
I remember the quaint
beach house my family
stayed at, with the pink
walls, and the room that
I snuck you into one night
before I left while everyone
else packed and slept for
the drive home. All the cute
shops down the street. The pier
where I would sneak beers
from the cooler of the vendor
selling them while you
distracted him. Bumming
cigarettes off of old men
for the two of us with the
wink of an eye.
You were beautiful.
You were everything
I’ve ever wanted in anyone
since. You kissed with a hint
of vanilla and tobacco and
heineken light that blended
so wonderfully I haven’t
tasted anything since.
You were beautiful.
I was sixteen.
Not much behind you,
but somehow worlds apart.
Now I am old. No longer sixteen.
No longer stealing beer
and cigarettes. I wonder
if you ever went back to
that beach. We were only
there for two weeks. Met
you four days late. Those ten
days were not enough. We would
sit under the pier at midnight,
you leaned against one of
the pilings, cigarette forgotten
in your hand, somehow always
touching mine. Oh, I remember
those two weeks, July, 2009.
Wonder if
you do,
too.
May 29, 2014
May 29, 2014 at 1:10 AM UTC
What can a reflection be to itself
Or a falling leaf apart from its mother?
She did not know the answer
She could only scratch her heart until it bled
Like eyes watching lovers that fall but never set
Pilings choking under rising tides
But not high enough to relieve their burden
A wax candle waiting for the torture of the flame
She could only watch knowing its life was short
Soon to join the memories she could never forget
By her rosary she knew somewhere was a blessing
By her cross she knew she was still saved
The stars that had chosen those who would look
Lit the path as she returned to the night sky
As her heart asked if life was only about regret
Nov 29, 2015
Nov 29, 2015 at 8:31 PM UTC
Today is Sunday and I'm going to the ocean
or maybe not. Definitely not doing the laundry
or maybe I will. Moss and even a small tree
grow in the rotten stubs of the pier pilings.
The city is Seattle and it has a macho airport.
Give me the comfort of a moose knowing its
water supply. The mosquito's acceptance of its position
among a million mosquitoes. The pool of stagnant
water that remains one with the mothering ocean.
I drift on the air, less than a seed, a bacteria.
Or I am human, big **** big brain containing
universal philosophic affidavit. Pleased by
the churning of my tongue, ****** enlightenment,
devout prayer, gourmet dining. I swear
it is best to be alive and to have loved Mary.
Aug 9, 2015
Aug 9, 2015 at 11:41 AM UTC
have been drilled and driven pilings around
to strengthen my foundations
pumped out all my feelings
upon this world and have to be fracked for more
to get that last drop of
and give again!
Dec 21, 2014
Dec 21, 2014 at 4:40 PM UTC
Winter is near, and night drapes quickly over the city, a black satin
sheath to be decorated by the early stars. But the skyline is
different, the glass and stone soldiers that elbow for prominence at
the river’s edge don’t shine bright until the river blackens out of
sight, not until the soft whoosh of the final ripples from the ferry
boats lap up against the pier pilings. No, the skyline sleeps late,
then awakens not for the city, for it stretches and smiles brightly,
before an open-mouthed inhale of cold night air, all show, an
opening number, a roaring, leg-kicking first dance for those who
stare and yearn, who pine in nervous indecision on the far shore,
tantalized, pawing at the ground before, perhaps, bridging the
pitch water to join the city splash, for if one stays put, feet planted
at a distance, beyond the parquet floor, well….
Dec 9, 2020
Dec 9, 2020 at 4:17 PM UTC
Salt pulpit,
streeted sand,
brass and tar,
bell broken
by the new wave.
Evening splinter
stuck in riprap,
memory hurled
into sharp relief.
Pilings grow,
dead teeth
from rushing
gum of surf.
Night's tide
parks on
blue sand,
dies as foam.
Boardwalk
lights never
seem to waver.
May 5, 2019
May 5, 2019 at 7:15 PM UTC