"quay" poems
'Twas all so beautiful a sight,
A long summers night; The sacred stars were burning bright about our mother moon.
The wind filled the sails above the waves, that sped us through the sailors tales, and brought us to a deep lagoon.
We cast our nets out far and wide, then watched them sink below the tide, which rattled out a tune for me and you.
We hauled aboard the silver fish, to fill our bellies and our fists, then set off home with seagulls squawking tunes.
The wooden boat now tied about the quay,
its tattered sail and rusty cleat,
gently tug and tug the rope upon the swell.
come to sea!
You know me well!!
Feb 10, 2018
Feb 10, 2018 at 8:23 AM UTC
Sitting in Circular Quay in a bistro on a warm winters day
dreaming while watching the tourists and ships sail by.
As I eat oysters and drink the day in with my wine,
past memories wash over me.
Morning teas, chats, and paper bark trees,
hikes through the bush and walks along the beach.
Watching dolphins play at dawn
and fishing the waters on New South Wales shores.
The Harbor Bridge alight with Bicentennial Fireworks;
a surreal beginning to this adventure.
Wringing every drop from days spent,
finding a new world with each step.
Discovering myself through the wisdom and eyes of you,
maturing, becoming my own.
Like family, you’ve been both mentor and friend,
carrying me through fire and back.
My life was undone as I first saw your shore.
Feeling my heart would break
with our first goodbyes,
unknowing that an permanent bond had been forged.
Tracing back over the years since we met,
I’ve been given more than my share.
Making me ponder how I have been blessed,
to count you as a true friend.
Aug 20, 2012
Aug 20, 2012 at 9:37 PM UTC
It always does before I can see
before my foot, my heart
goes out to the sea.
Like the East, like the West
every pole comes in full circle
around this quay.
Far from the bottom of the land
every drop of water spills out
streaming along the rivers
march over to the sea.
I too pop up branching in
with the widest circle sliding
down to this so big but lingering dip.
Therein the sea when a river
looks for the bottom
a star up above in the sky
without a rope without a roof
looks for its peak!
Eye on but touch not
keep off the Moon.
It's for the sea.
For the Moon
the sea too is a Moon!
Feb 21, 2018
Feb 21, 2018 at 3:36 PM UTC
Twelve o’clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations,
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
Half-past one,
The street lamp sputtered,
The street lamp muttered,
The street lamp said, ‘Regard that woman
Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her dress
Is torn and stained with sand,
And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin.’
The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.
Half-past two,
The street lamp said,
‘Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
Slips out its tongue
And devours a morsel of rancid butter.’
So the hand of a child, automatic,
Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.
I could see nothing behind that child’s eye.
I have seen eyes in the street
Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
And a crab one afternoon in a pool,
An old crab with barnacles on his back,
Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.
Half-past three,
The lamp sputtered,
The lamp muttered in the dark.
The lamp hummed:
‘Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smoothes the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and old Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brain.’
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars.’
The lamp said,
‘Four o’clock,
Here is the number on the door.
Memory!
You have the key,
The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair,
Mount.
The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,
Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.’
The last twist of the knife.
8.2k
Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.
Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.
In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew:
Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.
The consul banged the table and said,
"If you've got no passport you're officially dead":
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.
Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?
Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said;
"If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread":
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.
Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was ****** over Europe, saying, "They must die":
O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.
Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.
Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.
Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.
Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors:
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.
Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.
6.6k
Winds from far foreign climes beats upon the Lizard rocks
Gulls driven towards the blackest of crags, yet pass over safely inland
In the darkest skies they wheel and spin as if torn by some giant’s hand
White horses gallop crests of waves as they rush towards tiny harbours
There to crash savagely and rend cut stones from their secured places
Men work to save their boats, fighting the storm which mothers sent
Nature conspires to take their very lives as they struggle with her might
Rocks gnash their teeth and boats not safe yet, pass near their faces
Hoping for the safety of their port, men’s white faces line their gunwales
Black, white, red, blue and yellow, boats colours lost within the spray
These same boats that forge the men they carry out upon the sea’s wrath
But now just seek to bring them safely home to their worried wives
Their women stand upon the quay or stare worried from their windows
Churchyards on the hills above seaside villages filled with headstones
Men’s deaths caused by storms in past times of fishing for their living
Leaving spouses, their children to carry on their traditions and religion
Headstones cut from the very granite of the weather worn Lizard cliffs
Menfolk deep beneath the Cornish loam, there to rest for all eternity
Whilst below in the thrashing storm, the families fight once again
Then as quickly as it came, the storm blows out, waters return to placid
Men stretch their aching backs, those hidden from storm turn out
The seaman’s mission helps as it can the fractured families
And church maybe rings for those lost out to sea, never to be seen again
There will be time to mourn, and the village will then lament together
And those who are left, they return to their sacred craft of netting fish
Return to shining calm, to ply their trade, to bring food to this isles shore
Oct 4, 2016
Oct 4, 2016 at 8:56 AM UTC
You can see it already: chalks and ochers;
Country crossed with a thousand furrow-lines;
Ground-level rooftops hidden by the shrubbery;
Sporadic haystacks standing on the grass;
Smoky old rooftops tarnishing the landscape;
A river (not Cayster or Ganges, though:
A feeble Norman salt-infested watercourse);
On the right, to the north, bizarre terrain
All angular--you'd think a shovel did it.
So that's the foreground. An old chapel adds
Its antique spire, and gathers alongside it
A few gnarled elms with grumpy silhouettes;
Seemingly tired of all the frisky breezes,
They carp at every gust that stirs them up.
At one side of my house a big wheelbarrow
Is rusting; and before me lies the vast
Horizon, all its notches filled with ocean blue;
***** and hens spread their gildings, and converse
Beneath my window; and the rooftop attics,
Now and then, toss me songs in dialect.
In my lane dwells a patriarchal rope-maker;
The old man makes his wheel run loud, and goes
Retrograde, hemp wreathed tightly round the midriff.
I like these waters where the wild gale scuds;
All day the country tempts me to go strolling;
The little village urchins, book in hand,
Envy me, at the schoolmaster's (my lodging),
As a big schoolboy sneaking a day off.
The air is pure, the sky smiles; there's a constant
Soft noise of children spelling things aloud.
The waters flow; a linnet flies; and I say: "Thank you!
Thank you, Almighty God!"--So, then, I live:
Peacefully, hour by hour, with little fuss, I shed
My days, and think of you, my lady fair!
I hear the children chattering; and I see, at times,
Sailing across the high seas in its pride,
Over the gables of the tranquil village,
Some winged ship which is traveling far away,
Flying across the ocean, hounded by all the winds.
Lately it slept in port beside the quay.
Nothing has kept it from the jealous sea-surge:
No tears of relatives, nor fears of wives,
Nor reefs dimly reflected in the waters,
Nor importunity of sinister birds.
4.4k
Walking along on the shingle spit
At Keyhaven near to Milford on Sea
You can almost touch the Isle of Wight
Less than a mile away o'er the lea.
Crab-fishing next at Mudeford Quay
With Lizzie and Sam on the nets
When off flies my hat which then lands in the sea
Chase is given but I’m taking no bets.
Later, me new-hatted, we sit by a pub
Enjoying our lunch and a chat
And we laugh at the turn of events in the day
Particularly at the flight of my hat.
Wearily later to our lodgings we go
Chicken Cacciatore for dinner, by me
We then all collapse and nod off to sleep
This just always will happen by the sea.
©Joe Wilson – A Windy Day by the Sea…2014
Sep 3, 2014
Sep 3, 2014 at 10:50 AM UTC
An omnibus across the bridge
Crawls like a yellow butterfly,
And, here and there, a passer-by
Shows like a little restless midge.
Big barges full of yellow hay
Are moored against the shadowy wharf,
And, like a yellow silken scarf,
The thick fog hangs along the quay.
The yellow leaves begin to fade
And flutter from the Temple elms,
And at my feet the pale green Thames
Lies like a rod of rippled jade.
4k
A Trochee Christmas and its Several Interchangeable Anapests
Brought to You in Some Desperation
By Your Local Chamber of Commerce
(Second Trailer Past the Stoplight)
Christmas in the Park
Christmas on the Main
Christmas on the Lake
Christmas on the Strand
Christmas on the Square
Christmas on the Farm
Christmas on the Beach
Christmas on the Mall
Christmas in the Mall
Christmas on the Block
Christmas on the Coast
Christmas on the Gulf
Christmas on the Hill
Christmas in the Keys
Christmas on the Quay
Christmas on the Quad
Christmas on the Range
Christmas on the Ranch
Christmas in the Vale
And this year, Christmas at the 'Gras!
But no Christmas without anapests, ‘kay?
Nov 13, 2018
Nov 13, 2018 at 4:18 PM UTC
It was well trained cats in the cattery calling, pats on the back, back door, kicked in, mooring boats on the mooring in the morning and the phone call, cost cut, cold calling, and we're falling, falling, we're falling in love.
My best friends are criminals, and the jail cell crying is trying at times but trying sometimes feels tiring. The tire track tiling is abysmal, freewheeling in reverie, revving engines readily, sitting, settling and stirring imaginary cups of tea until eternity gives up delinquently.
I fail to recognise the narcissist in me until the inadequate rantings fall of the page at me. I want to be free, I want to be me, I want solidarity and I want that cup of tea, I want patriarchy, I want matrimony, I want monogamy and none of this is hyperbole. I have no apologies, especially not for the words I string together so irrationally. What else could you ask of me?
What else indeed, if I can't be naked I can't be free, if I alter the way I write I relinquish personality.
It doesn't seem right to me.
Dada is too crass for me, I need a cult of spontaneity. The English language is too brash to be...
Philosophical ideology and the books I read, all tell lies to me, are all absurd you see, I embrace the monotony, let the waves of the sea wash over me. I let the dictionary pages fall off the quay, like that moth on me, like the sloth i've been and cloth on screens. A dead dog can't scratch it's fleas, but to appease the beast we must first release, all creativity and return to being.
Jun 30, 2013
Jun 30, 2013 at 7:34 PM UTC
He always wanted to go on a trip
To entertain passengers on a cruise
After searching found the perfect ship
He set sail, he had nothing to lose.
Packing his sequined shirts for the ride
Which he'd got from the charity shop
He had also a few secrets hidden inside
including a avery pretty ladies frock!
He'd spent ages looking at it and he had sewn
little sparkly bits along the sleeves and neck line.
He wore it the first night and got covered in foam
and someone had splashed him with red wine.
He thought he'd disembark at the next available quay
But as time went on it was not as bad as he had thought
First night blues over he now sings every night at sea
In his new role as Drag Queen of the Palace Resort.
Passengers line up to get tickets for his show in the queue
He entertains all of the evening and most of the day
He is at his best and he is one of the crew
It is his home and is where he will stay.
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 11:17 PM UTC
<3 <3 <3
She enjoys her morning espresso
while he savors his mug of cappuccino
she shapes his dimpled face
in her newly wakened mind
he imagines her big brown eyes
gazing like a buck...inquiring, yet dreamy
she hums a lover's lullaby, for him,
each morning, before leaving,
he lets his charcoal pencil play
on his ever ready sketch pads
draws her face with pixie haircut
they think of each other day and night
always......at the very same time
yet...not a word is said when their eyes
meet...not an effort done, to break the ice
they'd rather keep things within,
their coffee mugs...witnesses,
to their similar daily practices
what a shame...what a waste!
their elbows, their arms touch in haste
as they hurry....towards the quay,
the ferryboat takes long, they both wait
leaving their untold love go by
along with their unsung lullaby...
it happens daily...without fail
their feelings, bubbling as they sail
but...neither has the guts to bare
how could they let life go on this way?
content with just a secret love affair...
<3 <3 <3
Sally
© Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
April 5, 2018
Apr 10, 2018
Apr 10, 2018 at 6:24 AM UTC
DO not because this day I have grown saturnine
Imagine that lost love, inseparable from my thought
Because I have no other youth, can make me pine;
For how should I forget the wisdom that you brought,
The comfort that you made? Although my wits have gone
On a fantastic ride, my horse's flanks are spurred
By childish memories of an old cross Pollexfen,
And of a Middleton, whose name you never heard,
And of a red-haired Yeats whose looks, although he died
Before my time, seem like a vivid memory.
You heard that labouring man who had served my
people. He said
Upon the open road, near to the Sligo quay --
No, no, not said, but cried it out -- "You have come again,
And surely after twenty years it was time to come.'
I am thinking of a child's vow sworn in vain
Never to leave that valley his fathers called their home.
2.1k
She lived along the Atlantic coast
and had a collection of lobster pots
by the porch
and her lawn was trimmed for croquet
smelled of clams at low tide
the house was set near barnacle rocks
just beyond a stand of trees.
I found her by looking in a phonebook
next to her name it said, "Poetry Journals,"
so I called the number, and said I was on my way.
"Is that ok?" I added hesitantly.
“Well, yes,” she laughed, “You can come buy one.”
I passed the sign for fresh eggs
and arrived at a black wrought iron gate that said,
"Poetry Journals - 2 for $5.00."
“You’re the first one
who’s ever made it all the way to the house for a journal…”
“In four dozen years,"
she said.
Then she asked,
“What’s your name?”
“I don’t really have a name," I said.
She nodded and understood.
She'd heard from Byron
that the Banshee drags souls out to sea
but sometimes the nameless
manage to float back looking for poetry
these lost ones are like driftwood
bringing a sense of chilly dusk
a retrospective on the sea
in a seashell
appearing by happenstance
at low tide
"yes, I hear a distant mumble of waves,"
she might have said of me
I was one of the lost
turning her porch into a quay of despair
the first one in almost 50 years
who had made it so far
to latch on
until high tide
when the rush of sea returned
washed me out again clinging for dear life
to a raft of poetry
Oct 9, 2017
Oct 9, 2017 at 11:02 AM UTC
Chug along old friend,
someday you'll see the end,
days of rest on the quay,
maybe not as active as you'll be,
slowly now,
in you go.
One final bell,
one last whistle,
men salute,
the name is taken down,
now...
all you are is a relic...
a memory of past strength,
now a museum.
You had your day,
you won them long ago,
you took a lot,
you have a big bite,
now come,
into the quiet rest of harbour.
Time to go to sleep,
sleep now you old, old,
battleship.
Sep 5, 2012
Sep 5, 2012 at 5:17 AM UTC
A cold wall of dis-associative amnesia
Low crawling across the bay
A transient sea ischemia
That spills across the quay
A tide of ghostly blanch
Enveloping all in its way
Like a timid avalanche
On a fugue state winter's day
r 18Jan14
Jan 18, 2014
Jan 18, 2014 at 11:05 AM UTC
I watch the waves
Crashing down below
I see the lighthouse
Lighting up the snow
I watch the sunset
Slipping out of sight
I see all the ships, make
Portraits in the night
I watch the stars intently
As colour fills my eyes
Tears of amazement
In wonder of the skies
I leave the embers glowing
I let my feet lead the way
Following the imprints
Along the rustic quay
I rest upon the harbour
I see your face appear
My is heart beating, racing
As we meet along the pier
Jul 23, 2016
Jul 23, 2016 at 6:38 AM UTC
Gild the marble as divine as ice,
Day's eye sinking below the horizon line,
Red dust drift among torrential specks,
Echoes boom from the valley pine.
Lay upon the crisp sunny hay,
Clean the grime from the sapphire quay,
Immerse 'tween the twilight breeze,
Asps should **** off, leave me in peace.
As synchrony reach cacophony,
Our destinies uncross, tis uncanny.
If true, a key unlocks powers of lore,
Against, the key forfeits my very soul.
Capture my seat of soft emotions,
Crush it against your decrepit merits weigh,
Scheme within your empty jeweled mansions,
Burn to ashes my undead void lest it decay.
All such entities loving their tragedies,
Ridiculous melodramatic melodies.
Slouch and wallow as monuments,
Imaginary quagmire of queer torments.
Swing the fury of Krato's strike,
Kneel in dust of ancient plights,
Hold thy loved ones above the light,
Spy the ragged truth outside insight.
Flood the starry gates: drown my pain,
From colossi reduced to ******** straits,
My mask cares less lest I am unpaid,
Friendship once did the beloved slay.
Tears trembles upon my eye.
Good-bye time, friend of mine.
Oct 8, 2010
Oct 8, 2010 at 6:26 PM UTC
There is only this marina and then there is the sea.
Nothing else is.
An apt enough analogy
for a myth dissolving town.
Shaded by storefronts half-expecting someone to arrive,
The hood- stripped wind
Gusts up solitary, empty alleyways
With only stroppy clatter boards to continue the conversation.
May 11, 2012
May 11, 2012 at 5:06 AM UTC
He sits with aging canvas bags
Draped around him on the windy quay
Where blown from busy parks he's come
Sheathed in crumpled rags, in skin
Seasoned by the salt and sun.
An old man by the harbour-side
Mincing bread in callused hands
And casting crumbs
To a congregation of silver gulls
Which parasitic and competitive
Move in a constant emotional state
About his feet.
And he beats a slow sad rhythm as he goes
In tattered shoes
Amongst the city's spirallings,
Between the tidal, restless, to's and fro's.
On habitual, familiar paths,
Which only the vagabonds know,
He steers his ragged ship of bones
And breaks the bow upon the parting throng.
Mar 13, 2016
Mar 13, 2016 at 6:14 PM UTC
Summer means smoking
in your car
with Paul
A couple guys and I
A couple guys, that's all.
In the studio
we sat
while I helped you with tap
and you needed the help
but repayed me back
so heavily you did
with your words
and your wis-
dom
high wisdom at that
Oh Devin,
I miss you-
How's Montreal?
I bet you're doing great
I hear it's beautiful in the fall
Kings of Leon
Gogol Bordello
and a little bit of Fun.
This music is your voice
a slight breeze and summer sun
Sometimes I take a listen
and reminisce
Eating ice cream on the Quay
a stoner's bliss
You always said I was special
"Not so sixteen"
Had a mind that had aged
like good cheddar cheese
God,
I hope you were right, Devin.
Cause I always fall too deep.
You know I felt like dying.
I long for eternal sleep.
I think of you sometimes,
you really do help me.
Bringing it back to this summer
when I actually felt healthy.
Nov 30, 2012
Nov 30, 2012 at 7:46 PM UTC
Outstretched bays,
con-caved crevasses, chevrons two by two.
At force through the mountains,
counting the moments as the seconds slip through the hour glass.
The hours pass, alas.
The quay whispered in fleeting moments,
the gradient of the sand permeates against the soles of your feet.
Soon that notion is washed away as the tide of the ocean collides with the tip of your toes.
Take me home,
or take me somewhere new at least.
How can I rest in peace when your life's in pieces and you second guess every second thing I say?
I'm broken now, outspoken and jaded from the days despair.
You're desperate and you'll never be the same but we go on as if nothings happened and as if nothing matters then,
nothing will change.
Take me back to the daybreak,
take me back to your uncorrupted mind and youth,
speak your truth to me one last time so we can go home together and never go
b a c k
Jun 7, 2015
Jun 7, 2015 at 11:45 AM UTC
And i don't own a piano to blame for my drinking
But there's something about an Irish summer sky
That smiles like Luke Kelly with a tear in his eye
Ballads of clouds float over a burning blue desire
You could travel the world having never got higher
A slab of Polish cans cobbled from a cities loose change
This place is our kingdom, this place is a cage
Never feeling so trapped, never living so free
As when I set you down at our favored midday tree
Where a charm of magpies promise silver and gold
And us two more, with secrets long since told
Effing and blinding for all that we've missed
Soon to forget how long its been since we've kissed
And i swear to you darling, we'll never see the dark
This here sun, stay true to us beggars of Arthur's Quay Park
May 28, 2018
May 28, 2018 at 4:35 PM UTC