When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
Let us (said He) pour on him all we can:
Let the world’s riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.

So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone of all His treasure
Rest in the bottom lay.

For if I should (said He)
Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore My gifts instead of Me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:
So both should losers be.

Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness:
Let him be rich and weary, that, at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to My breast.

When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessing standing by,
Let us (said He) pour on him all we can:
Let the world's riches,which dispersed lie,
Constract into a span.

So strength first made a way;
The beauty flowed,then wisdom,honour,pleasure:
perceiving that alone of all His treasure
Rest in the bottom lay.

For if I should (said He)
Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore My gifts instead of Me,
And rest in Nature,not the God of Nature:
So both should losers be.

Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness:
Let him be rich and weary,that, at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to My breast.

buffalo head cloud
rawhide drums
saline rollers at tantalus cross
ominous light
forms a short mile away
head lice
and peckers
tap the metal track

shovel train pings
the night quiet
moonlight
shines in
geometric form
arches and skiddles
and skirting reflections
(a vast connection of
grand design)

7 horns
at the passing
(oh that cold metal joy!)
stirring the blades
and ground cover
you better not turn old friend
just nod,
and cut what you need

it’s a bitter run
on the winter line
(with the finest
of wheels
and runners)
hold tight
on the pulley
the canyon wires
are clipping

there’s a gateway
to the copper town
with a key held
by coveted few
you can spot the
riders in their
box cars
watching closely
at the chunnel’s
dark turn

we’d walk
the lines often
(and put an ear to the ground)
the mine town still
and barren
hidden treasures
and pocket *******
settled deep
in a tranquil, stolid place

Plumped rouge with pigment
her lip fills to graze the *******
intent to disquiet the likes of de Sade
autografted with ocular detachment
should a Marquis wish to harness
the song of the morning
within a bandolier of Seine
to ensnare any bustled Persephone
gilted by discharge of ions
into a ménage of torment
through the Porte des Lions.

Hers is the tincture of doxy
caramelized and debrided of naivety,
empowered by the eve of invention,
swollen to curves and grounded in Paris.

Illumination defies pervasion
down to every gear and pulley
she has hushed through mechanization
and lulled by steam,
swaging a cacophony of flickers
encased in glass by the Lady’s watch,
where every rivet of her plate glisters silken
reverberation in cascade,
elegant, caged, and towering,
outspoken in silence,
ever challenging the Champ de Mars.

"Paris by Gaslight," written by Dionne Charlet, is the title poem to be featured in the upcoming steampunk anthology Paris by Gaslight, the third anthology in the By Gaslight Series from New Orleans small press Black Tome Books.  Look for the first two collections of poems and short stories set in Victorian Times, New Orleans by Gaslight (ISBN 9780615801186) and Cairo by Gaslight (ISBN 9781516961528).  Both collections feature poetry by Charlet, under the pseudonym Dionne Cherie.

Classroom Discussion
Raucous noise vibrates across
The surface of my ear
Not daring to enter and disrupt
  The train of thought
   That processes as a machine
    Turning, creating, assembling
     The wheel of thought spinning round the axle

          -------A **** on the rope, a pull on the subconscious

The pulley recognizes the intrusion of an applied force
  The wheels halt, as if rust jeopardizes its advance.

The thoughts scatter, a snapped electrical wire snaking in shock;
a cooper waving current racing back to a reality
through black rubber nerves.

          The noise registers,
confirming the split of a once continuous wire
Insignificant words- not quite processing,
  failing to relay information,
   refusing to form a sentence,
    still trapped in a realm of limbo
                 wanting to return to the rhythm of a reverie.

Slipping, falling
the mind surrenders, the electricity dies.

  Materializing in a classroom
   The cage for intellectual minds
    Discussing about.
From one world to another - act, adapt

The bright scientific lights burn
The eyes of the dreamer
Who creates from the dark,
   Objects exposed, judged, determined.
    No place for the dreamer, who loves
      warping reality.

            Within the metal box this reality is set.
Bars on the window, an indestructible verticality
Plastic seats, beige, blue, cold
Sit this way, look up, right, like that.
You are my animals now speak, raise a hand,
perform a trick, tell me what I want to hear,
Speak my language of intelligence, be my machine.

Yours forever, so I can be single never
If you're a pulley, I'm your lever
When we're separate, we want to be together
We don't know how to value true companionship at times.

This is not to say I pulley you down
And spread your Level to consort with my Ague
Your Bones, better than mine, to my Nerves frown
This Season as a Misbegotten Plague
A Blessing ideal is; Though disappoint
That Everyday Recorder plays again
Of Busy Trough's Effort spares to anoint
The very Oil you inspired since then
Come to think - Oil - its property slips by
And hard it is to keep the Dirt in-check
Though by Creed to be Faithful still - then lie,
As a Well-Mannered Specimen in-wreck.
All-in-all, we only wish for your Youth
To one day Understand the Better Truth.

So there I saw-
and then I curled
into my fetal ball of envy

my happiness had coagulated
and chilled
like a refrozen popsicle
at the back of the freezer.

even if you melted
my
stale
cracked
enclosure
you would still smell
the jealous-
like
hangover
on my breath

I swear it even
exploits my muscles
my tendons grimace
like massive internal
pulley systems.

when my mind
frowns condescendingly
at my juvenile grievances,
the follies laugh their
disassembled modulations
and ignore my pleas

no-it takes more than that.
my every yellow Laureling
becomes a necessity
to coax, soften my
serpentine
charity
from whence I have locked it.

Remember Him while you are young,
before your days and years grow dim,
before your time finally draws to a close
and you realise that life has ebbed away.
Remember Him before the sun burns out,
before the constellations are turned off
and the dark clouds remain after the rain.
Remember Him on the day the guards quake,
when the soldiers are doubled over in fear,
when the workers stop because they have fallen
and the faces peering through windows fade,
when the doors of houses are closed shut
and the whetstone grinds to a standstill.
Remember Him when people wake to silence
because the birdsong can no longer be heard.
Remember Him when people fear the mountains
and terror finds them wherever they walk.
Remember Him when the almond tree blossoms
and the grasshopper can barely drag itself along,
when all love and desire and passion wither away,
when the mourners come to wander the streets,
because you are reaching your everlasting home.
Remember before the silver ring is melted down
and the golden bowl is smashed into pieces,
before the water jar is shattered at the fountain
and the pulley wheel at the well is broken.
The dust becomes one with the earth again
and your spirit returns to He who gave it.

Nothing has meaning.
Everything is pointless,
an inane transient cloud.
A single breath of smoke.

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!

complex moveable pulley systems
consisting of rope
had hardened his heart:
that moveable block
a native of rocks
a kernel of nourishing corn
pumping starch to starving veins.
his naïve nerves reborn,
new to nature
where nothing is known
but the trumpets of judgement.
a society of contemporaries
with a common condition:
speak your latent conviction
while avoiding exhaustion by speech
(know the limit of the lungs),
so we accept the same transcendent destiny
of intense despair while it lasts
but not for nothing.
when we end up in the ground
do we still dream of the sky?

There's no water
In my well;
No pulley,
No bucket
On the end of a rope,
For you.

There's no water
In the cup
Of poison
I spew.

I'm just talking to my own echo;

Too scared to tell the truth

Too tired to fight for myself

I guess no one could fix me;

As if this curse wasn't enough,

I fall down rock bottom

Yet I can still see all of you.

How your lights shine the brightest;

I envy.

How you can see the light of the stars,

And not the pitch-black darkness

Of the night sky,

I guess I am but an opposite;

You get lifted up,

I get pulled back down.

Being bombarded with temptation
Doesn’t dim the fireworks
That crash like the a Titan gait
Inside my heart
No exposed midriff will propel my drift
As my thirst can’t be satisfied
With the bucket and pulley water they fetch
This carnal passion I feel remains sky-lit
Bright and beautiful
All, because of you

I lose something in this home
I smile, you know? I smile with humans
No, that’s not it
I’m true when I’m hating my creations
And what is becoming of me

Oh, pity me bubbly
I’ll weep all the same
But it’s lousy
My concerns are lousy
Just a boy, a tinkerer
A boy
I’m lousy, man
Not pretty
Pretty lousy

Just hate myself. Purely. Sanctimoniously
Doctors were onto something
A grin introduces myopia
Lousy
Lousy concerns
I’m blessed; better by a margin, right?
I ought to hate meself with more pep in the step
And better teeth
God, I wish I didn’t look like this
How could you build me like this?

It’s funny, you know. I write about the cerebral complexities, those magnified things. I notice the film grains in my eye, but hey, I’m still a ***** to loneliness.
Man, you ought to be lonely!

The only difference between now and then is, that now I blame a God that I don’t believe in. I blame it and that for my misfortunes, the fact that luck is merely a word to me.

God, I want to die
Can you hear me? I seek it, I reek of it
I want to die
I’ve mulled over it with great wit and dexterity
I want to die
Stoicism
I want to die
It’s healthy; symbiotic
I want to die
So lonely
Wanna die
I just want to reach the zenith of the mind’s pataphysical eye, before
Before I die
Haven’t you heard?
I want to die
Cries for help are immature
I am not a child
I want to die
Oi, someone help, with this pulley! 
I want to die
John’s my only friend
At one point, he was quite alright with dying
He’s been gone for a while
And I want to die

Prayer’s too hard of a simple machine,

A pulley of light years’ length

Wheeled by the world

I want to hook, like I can’t see the moon

For the man on it.

by Kim Addonizio*

Address older people as Sir or Ma’am

unless they drift slowly into your lane

as you aim for the exit ramp.

Don’t call anyone *******, *******, or *******;

these terms are reserved for ex-boyfriends

or anyone you once let get past second base

and later wished would be ****** into a sinkhole.

Yelling obscenities at the TV is okay,

as long as sports are clearly visible on the screen,

but it’s rude to mutter at the cleaning products in Safeway.

Also rude: mentioning ****** functions.

Therefore, sentiments such as “I went ***** to the wall for her”

or “I have to **** like a chick with a pelvic disorder at a kegger contest”

are best left unexpressed.

Don’t’ say “chick,” which is demeaning

to the billions of sentient creatures

jammed in sheds, miserably pecking for millet.

Don’t talk about yourself. Ask questions

of others in order to show your interest.

How do you like my poem so far?

Do you think I’m pretty?

What would you give up to make me happy?

Don’t open your raincoat to display your nakedness.

Fondling a ***** in public

is problematic, though Botero’s black sculpture

of a fat man in the Time-Warner building

in New York, his ***-*** rubbed gold,

seems to be an exception.

Please lie to me about your *******

and the permafrost layer.

Stay in bed on bad hair days.

When the pulley of your childhood

unwinds the laundry line of your dysfunction,

here is a list of items to shove deep in the dryer:

disturbed brother’s T-shirt,

depressed mother’s socks and tennis racket,

tie worn by ****** father driving the kids home

from McDonald’s Raw Bar. If you refuse

your host’s offer of alcohol, it is best to say,

“I’m so hung over, the very thought of drinking

makes me feel like projectile vomiting,”

or, “No thank you, it interferes with my medications.”

Hold your liquor whenever it is fearful

and lonely, whenever it needs your love.

Don’t interrupt me when I’m battering.

Divorce your cell phone in a romantic restaurant.

Here is an example

of a proper thank-you card:

Thank you for not sharing with me

the extrusions of your vague creative impulse.

Thank you for not believing those lies

everyone spreads about me, and for opening

the door to the next terrifying moment,

and thank you especially for not opening your mouth

while I’m trying to digest my roast chicken.

Get on with your lifelong crisis
But know the difference between response and reaction
It's all too familiar
Paper covers rock
Rock smashes scissors
Scissors cuts paper
Mask your bad breath
And get rid of that embarrassing screen name
You've served your time to society
Now go search for that cat with the vast collection of tongues
Reanimate the dead and beaten horse
But don't let yourself get bullied or get thrown under the bus
Stand up and use your great stoicism  
Use that pulley powered propulsion system you call a mind

When the sky
falls
I'll look down
At broken clouds
And
The fabric of space
Tore like the fray


****,
Whose gonna fix!?

I''ll be looked upon
Flyboy!

"Just jump on the moon!
Pull the sky in full
With a pulley
And if it's too heavy
Pull me!"

Who want's to be a
Citiczen of earth
When once white clouds
Are now
Covered in dirt

Since I'm
The only guy with wings
You say,
It's easy to see
Me
I should fly
Reweave strings
But I'm no seamstress

It seems stressful
To have duty
On Call
Due to my
Enclave of feathers

Assorted in perfection
Cleverly positioned
To make light
And lift
I take flight
Even when the wind
Blows away
I'm wieghtless

I've waited a long time
To be accepted
Along time
You denied me
Who wants to befreind
The freak
But now you say
It's my destiny
To save you
But I won't
Will you freak when I deny?

Will you cry
Shout
Scream
In the final moments?
Or own it

Like the fate
You made me taste
As bitter
As the first look you gave
When you saw
My disfigured back
You didn't front
Like you didn't notice
The ugly sight
Which would soon
Be your savior

Listening to my own noise;

Foolish.

Craving help,

Yet never asking.

As I see your world;

I might just stain it,

Take away time and waste it.

I'm being left behind;

It ain't your fault.

Don't bother.

I'm not worth anything, anyway.

With hapless weight at the other end of the chain,

Fallen down,* forgotten.

**It would be nice if it was at least remembered.

Can't Take No More

Never been so humiliated,
not once ever appreciated.
For years, been holding my tongue,
my bell has already rung.
Tired of taking peoples crap,
one more thing and I will snap.
No more time for chit chat,
I'm grabbing my baseball bat.
Next one who messes with me,
will have one broken knee.
Held in my anger, way to long,
I don't care if it's wrong.
Time to start busting heads,
no stitches or any threads.
Blood will gush from the brain,
ain't got time to explain.
I won't stop til you die,
as I watch your family cry.
Remember the time, when a bully,
now you're hanging from my pulley.
Blood dripping on the floor,
your organs, I will explore.
People are missing, police have no clue,
my basement is a blood bath zoo.
Now that are the bullies are gone,
maybe now, we all can get along.

My life nowadays is a circular motion,,
centripetal force towards studies...
My confidence is like the pulley block system,,
consider both( gravity and vacuum)..
I projected at 45° ,
fear is, being resisted by air...
I'm at work despite,,
being at rest...
Hope I keep the same momentum,,
overcoming the friction!!

Grandma's dress at the end was a sling around her
left leg and arm attached to a rope
and pulley we thought, or I did at five, was fun
to pull on
her exercise
she couldn't talk
but made expressive grunts to garner my mom's attention
when she saw me doing wrong
going into a room I shouldn't have
she was all there except
for verbalizing and being one sided
I liked to cuddle with her  
I still see it all

standing on the edge
of this empty well
looking within i had planned
to end it all, maybe end it well

the deep bottom i see
is dry, parched and old
skeletons of desperate souls
my brothers who jumped before

the well was full once
brimming with the village soul
it quenched the thirst
was more than a watering hole

my body is weak and bone is dry
the thirst is gone
the lines on my face
tell my story wry

the rope still hanging
on the pulley loose
used to bring up water
now it has turned into a noose

you see i fear the hooligans of this town are doing to me like i did to dad

you see i hated what i did as a child, because everyone was nice except

the bullies who bullied me to get posers out of my television guide

even if it ruined my guide, I don’t want people bullying me in that way

you see young dudes watch TV and adults out for walks

well young dudes go fro walks occasionally and i am in young dude heaven

you see people are trying to pump my body up to make me fight them

I don’t believe in violence and i don’t believe in mucking with cowards who want to fight

you see dudes, i am not a hooligan, i am a family person

you see i hate being told to stop looking at someones baby

especially when i ain’t really looking, and i hate being forced to fight the hooligans

who pick you on the the street and start bullying you for no apparent reason

you see dudes i am a reformed man now, I hated what the men used to do to me

I would hate to be treaed  like my mate because he is such a loser and he is so negative

and he probably brought it all on himself but i don’t want to be treated like him

especially when i am a nice person and i don’t want people to bully me

i had too much of that bullying in school and at the LETS course

and i remember being bullied at fyshwich TAFE, i just want people to leave me alone

whether i can fight or not, I don’t want to fight, so stop trying to fight me

you see last night i heard dad coming into my dream trying to explain exactly what he was doing

but i said, dad work on Betty, because i was just trying to be a normal kid

who was suffering through bullying all my childhood years

well, i might not have showed it, but i hated giving up my posters and i hated being with Lyle

you see he had anger management issues and i hated giving up all my money to Paula

mind you i like helping the poor, but i don’t want to be forced to, only when i have enough money

I hate when the poor drunken louts of this town treating me like a man to bully

if i don’t pay attention, and i hated being tread like a hooligan who has to be an on looker

i prefer if people would stop trying to pulley me, i don’t believe in bullying or kidnapping

I feel people are trying to keep me with the losers and if i don’t go near the losers

like the poster boy and Paula the lady asking for money

I hate being asked for money, I wish i had money, so i can be famous

I hate when people laugh at me, i have been laughed at all my life

I don’t want people to treat me like a little shy boy, or a target to tees

you see they are little wooseys for life, you see i love life

I love life more that any of these mates, ever did, and if i wanted to **** myself i would have done it now, I am not shy

i just don’t want the people at the mall to keep fighting so close to me, fighting is for the hooligans and i am not a hooligan

I was a nice boy at school and i didn’t believe in violence or bullying in anyway

If i could have that time all back, I would say NO, because i hate when people treat me like a ****** push over

i am no push over, and i wish people would leave me alone and stop treating me like a man to a fight

fighting is for the pits,and i don’t believe in violence in anyway

i prefer to be in young dude heaven which is with people who would treat me like a normal person

The rope & pulley are taut;
our arms move to salute
yet our muscles flex slowly, disembodied.
Dyed cloth unfurls in the breeze,
history is carved onto black mirrors.

This is the way of perpetual war -
the flag of state will not be lowered,
nor will it climb to a zenith
to flow like a river in sunlight.

In this unknown world of knowledge hilly,
You came as a Mozart in disguise dolly
To teach all teachers how to teach fully;
Benefitted though sad – not meeting daily.
Daily meeting not possible, gave a pulley
Of google drive and we see, hear our folly.
Giving a chocolate, taking note of us, O Alley.
A corollary we get makes us gorgeous frilly
No obfuscatory with him: sometimes chilly,
Times cold, but a hunky-dory, a true deli.
An accurate hortatory for English holy,
Teaching precise pronunciation alley
To improve us from state utter nugatory.
Encouraging, gave chances to all my folly;
Novel, pioneering, predicatory. Never did dally.
Blessed to have such a trainer as lovely lily
Had been an orator, excellent energetic filly.
Marwadi University is blessed with hilly –
The persons so high, so intelligent, O Molly!
Wish to have such a guide in my life daily
So that saccharin be added to life’s chili
And lethargy, fatigue, lassitude goes dully.
Let it be Surat or Morbi or Rajkot or Delhi
Dhanajay, Viral and Brij sir be with me fully.

2020 - day 146

Monday, May 25, 2020
7:48 AM

A creed of mathematics and mud, said
in what may be
metemperical
utterance from the ghost of the late,
and likely,
no longer lamented,
Sir Leslie Stephen, author, and,
therefore,
authoritative voice in the matter
of his own mind.
He apologized for the state called
Agnostic, lacking gnosis, may I say,

I know more, in fact, if I count my access
to knowns,
along with my access to the sequence
of knowing;
I know more than any prominent literati
in the time before Google's
manifestation as an idea shaping tool.

What do I know?
I know how to use the Internet to learn,

in broad sweeps through the remains of
empires,
into the dustbin of history for which we stand,
ready,
as a nation,

to build new and more destrucively effective
petards.

Blow your mind, hoist, lift-off, on your own farts.

Passing wind,
did you smell it?

❖

Mental as opposed to spiritual,
hmmm

this will need some study...
a little think,
an imaginary journey,

from here to... where? Where,
or when,
if
we were to change the world,
as we know it;
say,
we did. Say we changed the world,

who would know?
Who would care? We have yet,
breath, and fuel, and functionality.

We have movement, and a grasping,
holding, using,
sense
a natural, from the womb, knack
for making a fist.

❖



Womb survivors of the world, unite.

Defined to the finest quarkish sublimnity,
we entangled creative
thoughts being spun into the wind
passing, rising
from bloated corpses,
we all may witness, as real as you may imagine...

in 2020, we have eye-witness visions made plain,
we have seen the bodies stacked in carts,
we have seen My Lai from the sky,
we can imagine

being there... but don't, I mean, Memorial Day is...

maybe, it is... evoking memory of madness,

how is war good? It is good for the greedy, no one else.

We watch our hero's die to stop the evil, then we watch
the bankers free the last Krupp cannon molder,
to spite the facts we can see, as seen at Nurnberg.

That injustice, was done in my name, if I believe I am
pluralized as we, the people who hold truth,

the Yanks, ye' know? Yankin' y'strang, stranger... did you
stumble into our historical records of all the good
war has done? Nay,
we came to remember peace,

in high definition resolution sharper than the
unaugmented human eye can detect,

see that guy's head, or his helmet, look close,
no head remained in the helmet,

but I knew the head the helmet was hoisted from.

I watched PFC. -name redacted - die,

-- did you know, did you learn, ever, the meaning
of being hoisted on one's own petard?

A petard was a bomb. Nothing fancy,
a bit of alchemical magi-knowing of laws yet to be

discovered in the rubble of guesses as to cause,

accusations of arrogance and hubris, combound to whys,

never examined, never lived out in vital awareness.

❖




quenching a flaming spirit, is ill advised...

but it happens,
all the time. A heart pouring hope
into a mind jumbled
with signals and signs and pleas;

stops, stutters, and aches for
more
meaning meaning meaning in the
tinkling bells and crashing cymbals.

Hope, ash of aspirations inspired
by

love, as a thing, a noun, not a verb.

Love is a verb. Not a thing, an act.

Indeed, done, love is easy to think wisely done.
No announcement is needed,

long after the tale is first formed,
the legend rises from resting in peace,

to give a lie an opposing force, not a war,

a flood.

A deluge of lusion, a seeing at augmentedus
resolutions into further and beyond,
all we can think, or ask
into life
dimensions

former-wise, formerly, unknowable, now

known, according to the pundits,
these are not the days of Lincoln,
craming laws into his head by firelight,

calloused digits flipping page after page
of proprietary rules governing

the white man's burden.

---
❖

Staunching the flow, of blood, particularly,

meant stopping the flow, usually
stopping it from
flowing out of course,
flooding
the plain, flat, seeming, surface of reality.

Reality not being as defined as we imagine, in ourselves.
This being the flow,
if we pay attention, focusing on a point,
fixing a line of sight to a distant thing, a star will do,
planets,
no, those won't do, you see, the planets, now we know,

the planets reflect light,
they bounce light back to our eyes, which we invariably miss

when our attention is owed to the habits we hold.
Our daily grind... growing, or surviving in hope

We guess at many next right or otherwise, standing,
based up on a pedestal, a riser,

lift up your head, egregious though you be,
easily seen, so
easily you see as far as I'm concerned, dis
cerned, re
fined to the innermost edge,

ground to a halt... pressing blade to ground to scrape
a living

plowman, plow me a furrow, for the flood.
Maker of ways,  form me a way to flow,
channel my worth to the dying seeds

scattered, so long ago, on the thread of time we ride behind.

❖


a bug, an insect, not an arachnid,
by leg count
class-ift, insect extremely delicate, what use
could this bug be to me,
a mayfly,
that I did pay it this attention?

Did I mention, no,
sequences in re
telling, consider starlight bounces from sunlight,

but reason and gravity suggest, those
waves of starlight intermingle
with sunbeams.

A mote in my eye may have bounced once from the moon,
as a made its point pinging a receptor some where behind

the window of my soul
to make a ligandary acceptence of influence, from the Greeks,
in an instant
Zeno, doncha know, decided, made a cut,

skience is the conscision, the cutting into bits, until

no further cutting may be done,
and we are dust,
at best.

Flakey humans. Homes to literal gazillions of mites,
hunting and gathering epidermal

flakes of us, digesting said flakes, into demodex *****

{demodex, face mites, are as old as **** sapiens}

as we are in didactic tic mode, ******* meaning from flakes
rubbed off during the itching ear phase

of dust mote formations, see

a mite eating the scales of our bodies, our subjective habitats,

where we hold our habitual rituals;
a mite eating those, fecates and defecates, fecation required,

in consequentialist thought, prior to defecation.

Fact or fiction? Science, as we know it at grade eight,
on the global scale of common knowledge,

science is what we are convinced we know in useful ways.
Knowledge is our opinion of

what we think we know. That is a guess. Not quite right, flow

past
the missed try, reach a next un ex spectated, un i magined
ic tic tic

time passing options, while a life away, or wait

wait and see, or come and see.

I say go. Where this river runs, reach that place,

get all salty, then
lay in the sun and evaporate. Ex sciere, rise, sublimated into ever knowing more,

scient-if-ic known knowns within the un gated narrative we occupy.

We live in an atmo-sphere, a bubble, with a core- inward pulling force

which rolls the rock down the hill, as me and Sisyphus spend a pleasant afternoon
watching all our effort play out...

❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖


forgive me if you already made all the links, I found the scient bits glittering in Old Norse skita,

science is ific in its will to be known truth holding, bogus science is willing to lie, for prestige.

skei-
Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to cut, split," extension of root *sek- "to cut."
It forms all or part of: abscissa; conscience; conscious; ecu; escudo; escutcheon; esq­uire; nescience; nescient; nice; omniscience; omniscient; plebisc­ite; prescience; prescient; rescind; rescission; science; sciente­r; scilicet; sciolist; scission; schism; schist; ******-; schizop­hrenia; scudo; sheath; sheathe; sheave (n.) "grooved wheel to receive a cord, pulley;" shed (v.) "cast off;" shin (n.) "fore part of the lower leg;" shingle (n.1) "thin piece of wood;" **** (v.); shive; shiver (n.1) "small piece, splinter, fragment, chip;" shoddy; shyster; skene; ski; skive (v.1) "split or cut into strips, pare off, grind away;" squire.
It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Sanskrit chindhi, chinatti "to break, split up;" Avestan a-sista- "unsplit, unharmed," Greek skhizein "to split, cleave, part, separate;" Latin scindere "to cut, rend, tear asunder, split;" Armenian c'tim "to tear, scratch;" Lithuanian skiesti "to separate, divide;" Old Church Slavonic cediti "to strain;" Old English scitan, Old Norse skita "to defecate;" Old English sceað, Old High German sceida "sheath;" Old Irish sceid "to *****, spit;" Welsh chwydu "to break open."