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(The Dry Salvages—presumably les trois sauvages
      — is a small group of rocks, with a beacon, off the N.E.
      coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Salvages is pronounced
      to rhyme with assuages. Groaner: a whistling buoy.)

I

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.

The river is within us, the sea is all about us;
The sea is the land’s edge also, the granite
Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
Its hints of earlier and other creation:
The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale’s backbone;
The pools where it offers to our curiosity
The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.
It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,
The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar
And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices,
Many gods and many voices.
                                       The salt is on the briar rose,
The fog is in the fir trees.
                                       The sea howl
And the sea yelp, are different voices
Often together heard: the whine in the rigging,
The menace and caress of wave that breaks on water,
The distant rote in the granite teeth,
And the wailing warning from the approaching headland
Are all sea voices, and the heaving groaner
Rounded homewards, and the seagull:
And under the oppression of the silent fog
The tolling bell
Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried
Ground swell, a time
Older than the time of chronometers, older
Than time counted by anxious worried women
Lying awake, calculating the future,
Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel
And piece together the past and the future,
Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception,
The future futureless, before the morning watch
When time stops and time is never ending;
And the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning,
Clangs
The bell.

II

Where is there an end of it, the soundless wailing,
The silent withering of autumn flowers
Dropping their petals and remaining motionless;
Where is there and end to the drifting wreckage,
The prayer of the bone on the beach, the unprayable
Prayer at the calamitous annunciation?

There is no end, but addition: the trailing
Consequence of further days and hours,
While emotion takes to itself the emotionless
Years of living among the breakage
Of what was believed in as the most reliable—
And therefore the fittest for renunciation.

There is the final addition, the failing
Pride or resentment at failing powers,
The unattached devotion which might pass for devotionless,
In a drifting boat with a slow leakage,
The silent listening to the undeniable
Clamour of the bell of the last annunciation.

Where is the end of them, the fishermen sailing
Into the wind’s tail, where the fog cowers?
We cannot think of a time that is oceanless
Or of an ocean not littered with wastage
Or of a future that is not liable
Like the past, to have no destination.

We have to think of them as forever bailing,
Setting and hauling, while the North East lowers
Over shallow banks unchanging and erosionless
Or drawing their money, drying sails at dockage;
Not as making a trip that will be unpayable
For a haul that will not bear examination.

There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing,
No end to the withering of withered flowers,
To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,
To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage,
The bone’s prayer to Death its God. Only the hardly, barely prayable
Prayer of the one Annunciation.

It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence—
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness—not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination—
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness. I have said before
That the past experience revived in the meaning
Is not the experience of one life only
But of many generations—not forgetting
Something that is probably quite ineffable:
The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.
Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony
(Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,
Having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,
Is not in question) are likewise permanent
With such permanence as time has. We appreciate this better
In the agony of others, nearly experienced,
Involving ourselves, than in our own.
For our own past is covered by the currents of action,
But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroyer is time the preserver,
Like the river with its cargo of dead negroes, cows and chicken coops,
The bitter apple, and the bite in the apple.
And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
In navigable weather it is always a seamark
To lay a course by: but in the sombre season
Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.

III

I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant—
Among other things—or one way of putting the same thing:
That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray
Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened.
And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.
You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.
When the train starts, and the passengers are settled
To fruit, periodicals and business letters
(And those who saw them off have left the platform)
Their faces relax from grief into relief,
To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.
Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think ‘the past is finished’
Or ‘the future is before us’.
At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial,
Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)
‘Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
At the moment which is not of action or inaction
You can receive this: “on whatever sphere of being
The mind of a man may be intent
At the time of death”—that is the one action
(And the time of death is every moment)
Which shall fructify in the lives of others:
And do not think of the fruit of action.
Fare forward.
                      O voyagers, O ******,
You who came to port, and you whose bodies
Will suffer the trial and judgement of the sea,
Or whatever event, this is your real destination.’
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
                                  Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.

IV

Lady, whose shrine stands on the promontory,
Pray for all those who are in ships, those
Whose business has to do with fish, and
Those concerned with every lawful traffic
And those who conduct them.

Repeat a prayer also on behalf of
Women who have seen their sons or husbands
Setting forth, and not returning:
Figlia del tuo figlio,
Queen of Heaven.

Also pray for those who were in ships, and
Ended their voyage on the sand, in the sea’s lips
Or in the dark throat which will not reject them
Or wherever cannot reach them the sound of the sea bell’s
Perpetual angelus.

V

To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits,
To report the behaviour of the sea monster,
Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry,
Observe disease in signatures, evoke
Biography from the wrinkles of the palm
And tragedy from fingers; release omens
By sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable
With playing cards, fiddle with pentagrams
Or barbituric acids, or dissect
The recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors—
To explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams; all these are usual
Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press:
And always will be, some of them especially
When there is distress of nations and perplexity
Whether on the shores of Asia, or in the Edgware Road.
Men’s curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint—
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime’s death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.
Here the impossible union
Of spheres of existence is actual,
Here the past and future
Are conquered, and reconciled,
Where action were otherwise movement
Of that which is only moved
And has in it no source of movement—
Driven by dæmonic, chthonic
Powers. And right action is freedom
From past and future also.
For most of us, this is the aim
Never here to be realised;
Who are only undefeated
Because we have gone on trying;
We, content at the last
If our temporal reversion nourish
(Not too far from the yew-tree)
The life of significant soil.
Perched upon a corporate throne,

We march into the great unknown

As wasted words of gossip drone

And steel replaces brick and stone.
Soon you find yourself alone

In crowded streets with a global phone,

Doing a random strangers bidding.



A means to an end they say,

As poor men die while rich men play,

When honest work brings modest pay,

And doesn't last 'em through the day

Though profiteers in moral grey 

Flood the airwaves to in turn say,

"Our wealth simply paves  the way,

Tomorrow is your salvation day,

You want peace? Then war is only fitting."



Look and you will see

Money buys democracy,

The Citizens United, see?

If we knew the truth, would we agree?

Those answers are not  going to be

Yes or no but more likely

Maybe, perhaps, or possibly,

Because in reality,

Right and wrong are just kidding.



To those who fret the plagues we face,
Yet believe we can change this place,
Who stifle doubts about the Human Race,
And yearn to be together in this chase,
With subdued pride and envy, in every case,

Seeking common goals to found the base,

May we lay the evil plots to waste,

For evils clients who once stood are now sitting.



The time is now, make a stand
,
Pull our heads out of the sand

Call their bluff with a hidden hand

Of virtue they don’t quite understand,
Defy procedure’s they have planned
,
Unite across the lines that brand,

Refuse all prejudice, none may be accepted.



Some know for they already looked

And the flow of money keeps them booked,

Takes but once to have them hooked,

Setting the table with food uncooked

For others whose foundations shook

Are pitted against the small time crook

Hoping only that we be protected

.

Hark the sounds of rebellious cries

For those that call, they realize

All that lives sure enough dies
But when displeased we close our eyes

To the masters of disguise

Who think their profit justifies

The invisible hand growing in size

While their strings attached go uncorrected



They kept us quiet all the while

Waiting with numbers dialed

To put the innocent to trial

Lining up in single file

To be cast into the same old pile

None willing to lay down their tile,

Casting shadows upon their guile,

The double agent mercantile,

Lobbying candidates to endorse.



All I ask, is to what do we base belief?

Dying children get no relief

Oil poisons the coral reef

Prophecy of the fallen chief

Given a thought but a bit too brief
Together a tree, alone but a leaf
Although it is all who feel the grief

Of our actions consequential course



Corrupted elites discuss our goals

So we continue to dig our holes

To depths that darken souls

Rigging markets to decide our roles

Assumptions made so that greed controls

They draw their graphs till the pencil dulls

Then add a factor, see how that goes

Without even the slightest feeling of remorse



Growth is sacred, but is it moral?

Strengthen reason yet we quarrel

Over falsities of ***** oral

Arrangements like that of floral

Remedies but not doctoral

Blood of fallen lives pastoral

Remind that we’re all mortal

But all thereafter bear the force.



So please tell me at what cost?

In a moments past our objectives lost

Compassion was our hand now tossed

Lines we’ve drawn, lines we’ve crossed

How much dirt can be washed

From our conscience we exhaust

Before shattering glass of fate we sloshed?

Working from the scattered pieces back to the source



It is us who blindly lead the strut

We are the source and nothing but

Whose center point is one giant rut

Where false desires cracked and cut

And the selfish feed an endless gut,

When our culture begins to split and jut,

We might finally ask... It was all for what?
Inspired by the great Bob Dylan. I refer you to the song “It’s Alright Ma’”
Alexis J Meighan Oct 2012
A dads uniform
                          (Now my own)


           On any given day I saw the many faces of a man.
I watch him play his roles like they were well rehearsed scenes.
He was a star in his own actions, drama, thrillers and romance.

         He wore his soldiers uniform on sunday, torn jeans, white T-shirt with no sleeves and abrasions and scrapes gave stripes to his big arms.
He had oil on his hands and grease on his chin, barking orders as he worked on the car.
" Hand me that 3/4 standard and torque it to the 5th notch"
"What!? What the **** language was that?" I thought to myself as I awkwardly reached for the 1st thing my eyes spotted and held it up.
"That's a hammer Alex!" He said shaking his head as he smiled and walked toward me. He rarely had a disappointing tone. Later he explain the workings of a standard torque wrench Vs a metric wrench with converter. 10 years later I used that wrench to change my Edelbrock Electronic Carburetor 400 series twin stoker all by myself.

    I once saw him defend his honor. That day he wore  his heroes uniform as he leaped from person to person striking, grabbing, kicking, and throwing the 3 large men who underestimated his ferociousness. His tank top was ****** from the wound on his nose. His hat fell to the dirt next to the beaten, unconscious, and humiliated foes that once stood before him.
I could see that he intended to continue his lesson in respect but as he glanced over to see my wide open mouth and unmoved stare he quickly contained his aggression. He picked up his hat and shook it a few time to knock the dirt off. In that moment was another unexpected act. He help the worst of the men to a sitting position and asked him if he was ok. He was genuine in his concern that he may have been excessive in his judgment.
Later that night he explain to me that violence should never be the 1st choice for a solution and our actions should reflect the person we want people to see.
I would remember this 15 years later when sitting with the man I just choked unconscious, letting him drink my gatorade and catch his breath moments after he attempted to robbed me at knife point. In that few minutes I learned his life story. My friends said my actions were foolish.

            Duct tape and crazy glue are the tools of every street born medic.
T-shirt gauzes and boiled stones often made his grace when he wore his First aid uniform.
      
        As a kid I did DUMB very well, from gun powder soup, to a game of dart board hands. One of the more gruesome moments was my apple cutting malfunction. I severed my finger at the base pretty good. I cut right through the knuckle at the base of the index finger. It was the 1st time I fainted. Its still a debate weather it was the loss of blood or sight of it. Like a seasoned veteran he jumped into action. While most doctors would  use a coagulant like Lanxess, iodine and 22 gauge suture for this injury but not this man. He opted for all purpose flour, beer and duct tape to disinfect and seal the wound. Even though it was 3 hours before the emergency room would clean and repair the damage, I didn't shed another drop of blood while his homemade fix was in place.
I learned a lot of (what his friends called Ni**a rigging) first aid tips from him.
12 years later, while on a training exercise with  my CCC group in the forrest, a grade worker suffered a compound fracture from a slip and fall while hiking. I used a heated licorice root as antiseptic and 2 flat rock, my shoe in soles and a belt to mend and set his arm well enough to hike 2 miles back through the trail till we found help.

          When I write my poetry I never know what it is people see or interpret from it. I know the workings of romance and I know the power of its application. The day he wore his Casanova uniform I witnessed 1st hand the great reward a little effort can bring 2 people in love.
         On a normal day in the park us kids ran around yelling and screaming while him and mom sat on the grass watching us play. In the moments of a physical dilemma I sat next to him to catch my breath as he talk to her about random things. I knew my presence was interfering with whatever moment him and my mom were having but I was too intrigued by the task he was performing on the side to care.
On the reverse of a box top he drew a picture of a monkey sitting on a tree in the middle of the water. It was handing a flower to a mermaid sitting on a rock. I never forgot the joy on my moms face when he handed it to her and said "this is us."
I saw that picture everyday displayed on her mirror. Here I am 25 years later looking at my own art and words displayed across the walls of my home. My wife often looks at her description in the words and her name in the titles. Our own son invades our personal space as we sneak kisses and exchange affection through his predictable intrusions.

        My own uniforms hang in my closet waiting for interpretation from onlookers.
Suit up and be seen, or close your eyes and remember his many suits. Your in my thoughts. I hope this finds its way to you.
        Love
              -Alex J Meighan-
Tryst Jul 2014
Prologue

Once upon a time; when ocean
Travel was a novel notion,
Many feared the rocking motion
Of the ocean going ships;

But the worst sailing endeavor,
Even worse than stormy weather,
Was the unmistaken terror --
Pirate Peter and his whips ...


Introduction

Tales are wove from authors spinning
Yarns, their fingers deftly trimming
Words, until a new beginning
Sprawls across the open page;

So begins our humble telling,
On the street, an orphan's dwelling,
Where a young lad's feet are swelling,
Barely fifteen years of age.


A Humble Beginning

Peter shook and Peter shivered,
Weary limbs felt cold and withered,
Chilling winter winds delivered
Snow, fresh-fallen on the ground;

Huddled up, his clothes were sodden,
Tattered shoes were too well trodden,
Lost, alone, a misbegotten
Miscreant; half-froze, half-drowned.

As he lay there, slowly dying,
Given up all hope of trying,
Who should chance to walk on by him,
But a captain of the sea;

“What's this now!” the old tar spluttered,
“Up you get lad, you'll be shuttered
Some place dry tonight!”
he muttered,
“Take my hand and come with me!”

Peter felt himself man-handled,
Lifted up, and there he dangled,
Glancing upward, at his tangled
Grey and matted saviors beard;

“Thank you kindly, Sir!” he mumbled,
Took one step and quickly stumbled
Forward, landing in a jumbled
heap; “Lad its worse than I feared!”

Heaved upon the captain's shoulder,
Peter felt a might less colder;
As the sea dog walked, he rolled a
Cigarette with one free hand;

“Get some sleep son, soon the dawning
Of a bright and brand new morning,
Will come calling, and adorning
Over all this blessed land!”



A Merry Meeting

Peter woke from days of sleeping,
All around, he heard a creaking
Sound, as if the room was speaking,
Telling of its timber tales;

Up he stood and rubbed his bleary
Eyes, he still felt weak and weary,
Cabin walls looked drab and dreary,
Roughly hewn with rusty nails.

Suddenly, he felt a hunger,
Starting small, but growing stronger;
Feeling he could wait no longer,
Peter burst out through the door;

Racing headlong through the belly
Of the ship, his legs were jelly;
Once or twice poor Peter fell, he
Felt alone, lost and unsure.

Then he chanced upon the captain,
Dining with a merry chaplain,
Feasting on a pig with cracklin',
Sitting on an up-turned drum;

“Here's a fine lad in a hurry!
Settle down and save your worry,
There's no need to flurry scurry!
Come and have a taste of ***!”



The Daily Grind

Peter mopped and Peter scrubbed,
He got down on his knees and rubbed
The decks, and every day he loved
To feel and taste the ocean spray;

Rescued from a world of blindness
To his plight, he paid the kindness,
Working hard; where most would find this
Horrid, he embraced each day.

Such was life until one evening,
Waking from his fitful dreaming,
Peter heard an awful screaming,
And he watched as sailors ran;

From the deck, he saw the flying
Skull and Crossbones flag, implying
Pirates with no fear of dying;
Every one, a wanted man.


Battle At Sea

Cannons roared and cannons thundered,
Blunderbusses bussed and blundered,
Roiling masts were shot and sundered,
Splinters flew across the deck;

Rigging crashed and rigging crumbled,
Smashing down as cannons rumbled,
Falling masts and sails all tumbled,
Landing in a twisted wreck.

Swiftly came the pirate vessel,
Drawing close, to crash and nestle,
Broad-side on to form a trestle,
Over which the pirates ran;

Fearful of impending slaughter,
Sailors dived into the water,
Knowing they were never aught to
See their loved ones e'er again.

Peter rushed and Peter scurried,
Dodging blades that flashed and flurried,
Down beneath the decks he hurried,
Seeking for a place to hide;

In the hull, the darkness beckoned,
Peter locked the hatch, and reckoned
That might hold them for a second;
Finding crates, he hid inside.


His Master's Voice

Down below, young Peter waited,
Silently, his breath abated,
Hearing pirates jubilated,
As they plundered through the ship;

Soon he heard the latch locks broken,
Creaking as the hatch raised open,
Then a cold voice, harshly spoken,
And the lashing of a whip.

"Filthy ****-dogs, stop yer looting!
Stow the cheering and the whooping,
Look to all the sails a-drooping,
Fix the masts and man the oars!

On the morrow, we'll be sailing,
And I'm right anticipating,
That we'll get a strong wind trailing,
Speeding us to yonder shores!"



An Unexpected Find

Peter woke and Peter pondered,
How much time had passed, he wondered?
Cautiously, he rose and wandered
Silently from stern to prow;

In the quarters of the captain,
Peter found a pirate wrapped in
Silken sheets; a perfumed napkin
Draped across his furrowed brow.

Peter glanced around the room
And spied a hat with feathered plume
That lay beside a gold doubloon;
Time to make the pirates pay!

Peter stretched and Peter strained,
His fingers gripped the hat and claimed
Their prize, and next the coin was gained;
Gleefully he turned away.

Then a glinted gold reflection
Gleamed, attracting his attention;
Peter crawled for close inspection,
Wondering what he had found;

Two fine whips of equal measure,
Golden handled trinket treasure;
Peter felt a glowing pleasure
As he stole them from the ground.

Stealthily, he reached the deck, and
Found a crate on which to stand
And saw a sight that looked so grand,
How could fate have been so kind!

They were anchored by the moorings
Of the dock, where several mornings
Past, young Peter had been snoring,
Freezing off his poor behind!


Trouble In Town

Pirates robbed and pirates looted,
Pillaging, they laughed and hooted;
Plants were trampled, trees uprooted,
As they raced through city streets;

In the church, the bells were ringing,
Clangers clanging, peels were singing,
Warning of the pirates, bringing
Fear to folk, now white as sheets!

Peter tracked his pirate quarry,
Mind made up to make them sorry,
Chasing them beneath a starry
Ebon sky, he felt quite brave;

Suddenly, he heard a yelling
From behind, three pirates smelling
Like a brewers fare, no telling
How this trio might behave.

Drunkard Pirate:
"What’s this now, who’s that their lurking
In the shadows, be thee shirking
Looting tasks, why aren’t you working?"

Then he stopped and then he cried;

"Bless my soul, our captain joining
In the raiding, how exciting!
Begging pardon, Sir but finding
You at work is joy!"
he lied.

Peter grasped the situation,
Putting on an imitation,
With a rough edged inclination,
Like the one he’d heard before;

"Lazy dogs, now stop yer bleating
Otherwise you’ll get a beating,
Now you’d best get on retreating
Back to ship, we’re leaving shore!"


In his hat, he felt quite dashing,
Brandishing his whips, and lashing
At the three, and then just laughing
As he watched them run away;

Emboldened by his hero action,
Peter felt a strange attraction
To the power of the captain
That he had become this day.

Then his luck turned swiftly sour,
For upon that very hour,
Soldiers left a nearby tower,
Seeing him, they gave a squeal;

"Pirate ****, you will surrender,
Otherwise my blade will end yer
Evil life, now will you bend a
Knee and yield, or ******* steel?"
  

Peter tried to start explaining,
But the soldiers blows were raining
On his head, the blood was staining
On his clothes, the wounds did sting;

"Look at him, he must be wealthy,
What a hat! And look at this see?
Gold doubloon and golden whips! We
Bagged ourselves the pirate king!"



Trial In Absentia

Clerk of the Court:
Silence now! This court's in session,
Pirates must be taught a lesson,
But we may show some concession
For those with the sense to speak!

Let us hear the turncoats raving,
Of their captain misbehaving,
Then decide whose necks we're saving;
Otherwise, they're up the creek!


Pirate 1:
If it please your lords and ladies,
Captain Peter ate three babies!
Bit my dog and gave him rabies,
Hang him up and hang him high!


Pirate 2:
Here I swear before you gentry,
This whole case is elementary,
Don't give him no penitentiary,
Hang that captain out to dry!


The Honorable Judge:
It seems the evidence is clear,
Their testaments are most sincere,
No need to bring the captain here --
Evil men must pay their toll;

I find him guilty, captain Peter,
Scourge of seas and baby eater,
Hang the lying scoundrel cheater,
God have mercy on his soul.



At The Gallows

Clerk of the Court:
Peter, thou has been found guilty;
By the powers given to me,
I pronounce the sentence on thee,
Thou shalt hang this very day;

We allow you this concession,
Time to tell us your confession,
And denounce your ill profession;
Do you have last words to say?


Peter:
Upon my life, that thou contrives to take
Through ignorance, I swear before you all
That bearing no bad will to your mistake,
I'll hold you unaccounted when I fall;
If thou cares not to see the humble boy
Who slept upon the streets, who ate of rats,
Who froze in frigid snow as thee strode by,
And died inside, each time thee walked on passed;
Then who am I to think the less of thee?
For in thy eyes, I count not as a man,
So now I wonder what thee came to see?
Why should the end of me be worth a ****?
        A worthless life, yet still I did no wrong;
        Perchance in death, my tale is worth a song.


Dumb-struck faces squinting, staring,
Muttered murmurs, whispers sharing,
Shaking heads and nostrils flaring,
Then the townsfolk knew and gasped;

A drummer struck a solemn beat,
As Peter felt a ray of heat
From winter's sun upon his feet;
Peter smiled, and Peter passed.



Epilogue**

Late at night, when wind comes creeping
Through the streets, with children sleeping
In the gutters; Death comes reaping,
Searching for their blue-tinged lips;

In a flash of fearful thunder,
Lashing splits the night asunder;
Driving Death from easy plunder,
Ghostly Peter cracks his whips!

THE END
Lux
Those who were marginalized by the braids and serpentine lights, devotions were made in San Juan allowing electromagnetic discharges from the imperceptible space-time of Vernarth's parapsychological quantum; alluding to clarities that achieved everything by having Patmia in the material and incorporeal from the start of the stained glass windows and archetypes by Transfer Quantum that burned the chins of hominids who believed to be immortal as if they were looking in this position for the direction between the eyebrows and the chin , for the Euclidean incidence crossing all the pools that are between quantum means of transfer of ions and cations. The oscillations of the sparkling field of consciousness of the containers were of ethical variables that became perpendicular to the space of draft or levitation of the designations that originated with accelerated electric charges on Patmos, developing albiceleste skylights over the harmonic equations as they elongated in proportions of quanta that They argued greater than those that circulated elliptically from Grikos to Skalá, and then to Profitis with assiduous progenitors of long-wave quanta. The magnificence of the halo became rectilinear up to the high altar that was atomized from the unskillful penumbra to reabsorb the inclinations of physical life in the Macedonians and the Achaemenides when they were trapped by the loss on the propagation of the Lux, which was imposed in hemicycles where they were they reclined to relax in the lux of rest of the path of the reasoning that made pederasty in the links with the minuscule obtuse lights, reeling from the clothing and its finite speed of what measures the ability to be undetermined in the margins of error of the antagonists when originating flow rates, greater in his dermis to regenerate towards any other that could be clothing of greater speed.

Thus was the scenario of dimensional magnitude between the powers that did not have contact, but their dimensionless energies on a surface that reached absorbent to the one that rectifies the concretive of the error that partially abused them. Their legacies would pass to a supplementary electromagnetic plane, separating their masses and retaking orientation from where they returned, where if the ideal of the final rational was refracted where everything would be vivid darkness. The obstacles classified them in the closure of the average height and the average surface, to then redirect to the maximum height and maximum surface propagating in irregularities of the Ego "Believing that they were never overcome in the diffuse perception of the metal mirror." The incident rays of the Lux would go to meet the multi-incident plane of the Mashiach, the wave angles were refracted throughout the sinuous law as radiosity passed over the greater mass that was normalized from the tangent that was projected 180 meters above the eyebrow. and Vernarth's chin, along with the recharged electromagnetic strengths of Alexander the Great's reactivation bezels, which at times seemed to levitate over the Lux's high frequencies and vary independently with its crowded functionalities, among scattered restraints that it presented to both weightless behind. from the decayed marble sawdust, separating from its phosphorescence that bounced between the rigging of solid surfaces and semi-solid ones, when realizing that the sea and the silica were confessed to the Pronoia of Delphi. Inducing Vernarth for the first time into a Pronoia versology on the Athena of Delphi, prompting them to separate from the world and it's holistic to divide into three portions of the dissociation of consciousness from the end of the Lux of Parapsychology, which had hosted them for centuries and centuries. . The Pronoia conspiracy systematized the reaction that would reunite them after this oracular parapsychology, making the adversaries believe that they were discrepancies of clinical parapsychology, equating warlike causes in the containment of Delphic neuroscience. From this quantification, the predominance of Vernarth's Lux de Pronoia was announced, linking peculiar segmentation of submit logical historicity in this work as a starting thesis, which speculates the same for those who have to make an analysis of historical dogmatic imperialism as a justification for mythological normality. The Lux thesis aimed to show that the dimensions of the mythology and the submitology, when exposed in physical quanta, made a tendency of irresolution in the abode of spiritual Tractatus reasoning and not in the instinctual one, which watches over recitals where history and its collective memory indicate outbursts of moderation. The role of the submithology  is to pretend that this normality is made close to the instruction after yours temporary for causes of your deep patrimonial, that makes them captives from the social complexity, with the disambiguation of certain criteria by maximizing the hidden truth of the ascending opposition forces that they have generated great conflagrations, intuition being the unreflective pseudo-reality with historical formalities that stumble into the terrified directionality of the myth that was to be reality. The tiny spaces of the verve left by the silent mechanics of the Persians became defensive when they saw their emissaries incoherently in the verticality of Allah when they saw that the confusing world with anxiety exaggerated predictions and failures invulnerability of a lineage that always had. been condemned to the desert.

Everything conspired with a Pronoia of siege, before the exegesis that sought purification and that was how they headed and misdirected their mistakes in the active train of the recess of their abstracted retreat, in a universe that also abandoned them after the subsequent train of Aurion waking them in their illusions with swords, and stealthy spears in dreams that specified safe rest. The ferocities of the proto-souls of assault carried away the translucent bodies of the Persians, and the Hellenes in acts of honor made such congenital paths of the understandable vocabulary that he did not speak. The prism was located in the cautious measure of its contractile dispersion with white separations of mantles, earth, and water scalded by dynamics that formed colorful activations with their withdrawal phenomena in the immaculate albino Lux that dissolved all of the facet optics that it made. Lux's great brain in the instant that the Thuellai airs transfigured the nuances of the Atros monastery, with objects that refused to be absorbed by the black hue, generating mechanical waves of equivalence in their identical interference that caused two opposing forces to distill the coherent differential that had to be overexposed in the category of historical Submitology. The two inverted waves separated, the Hellenes moaned and hiccupped for having to become identical when separating from their immaterial bodies, doing wonders that would house additional souls that would complement a transitory becoming towards the garden of the angels that provided them with identical beams of light, interfering in what animated the lights of pageantry, with the antithesis of interference where they resided in constancy knowing that they felt possessed of benefits of the eternal length of existence, but with pressures of mutable in some involuntary constancy and amplitude of having parallel directions with Saint John the Apostle and the Siblis. The phenomenon of polarization of both empires was denatured in a transverse way in all the electric fields after this feat, inciting unique fields of the pure and selective ascending ecosystem, which generated polaroid substances at the angle of ninety degrees above the browbones and chin of Vernarth, to approach the Pronoia of concatenation with Alexander the Great refracting unscathed hyper-vital and transcendent faces of infinity. Like any other phenomenon, the Lux crossed both bodies like two Xiphos swords that processed the electromagnetic valve, by iridium that converted with all the coarse Lux that crossed the succumbed immateriality and stopped the shaft and the nail that hang in the typology of electromagnetic radiation from the Hellenic world between them, making an ominous redemptive fire that was regimented to leave them both in the middle of a farm where there were farmyard animals, stockpiled pastures and a house that absorbed them as parents who would love them as beings of Lux. Thus, this primary parapsychological quantum network penetrated the level of the archangels that made them be together in planes of manumission, and that does not admit bi-quantum personality or bi-parapsychology that can cancel out the portent of the helmets and the lineage that does not dazzle if they are not made of iron.

The life of the other world began to be encompassed in all the Subtraigus beings that would correspond to the astral plane that was confirmed after the Kalidona Romantics deduced the Unicorn Uilef or Uilef Monókeros after Pronoia. Kalidona being an uninhabited island and the Uilef sleeps in between copulating with Spinalonga and Kolokythas along with other smaller islets, plus two hundred that will make up six islands of the twenty-six tetragram of Alef. Here Drestnia went with her consort of Etréstles from the Koumeterium of Messolonghi to find fateful encounters of Pantheism based on the majestic copulation of beauty, among twenty-six numbers that prevailed in virtuosos who took refuge in Kalydon or Kalidona, preparing for their rampage with grafted grotesque derived bodies of the Falangist Hellenes who were arranged of their musculature, so that they directed the finesse of the civility of Hesiod, Terpando, Archiloco, Baquílides, tragic like Etréstles, Aeschylus Sophocles, Euripides and comedian like Aristophanes.
Lux
God has enabled you to live long
Up to the rare  age of ninety years
Not as a blessing to you whatsoever
But as a curse of Knowledge,
For you to realize the evils you did
During your reign of terror,
when you were Kenya's  president .

You misruled Kenya for twenty four years
Clinging to power like **** on lion *****,
You plunged the country into abyss of poverty,
You established torture chambers
And gave priority to prisons,
Special branch police and detention  camps,
You planted tribalism with passion
Favouring your Kalenjin tribes,
Inspiring them with the spirit of sadism,
That fuelled assassination and public fear,
Daniel Moi your ninety years are birthdays,
Of nothing else but tyranny and dictatorship.

You walked with government money in your bag,
You used tax payers money to cement corruption
You often behaved as a duffer, but a rigging expert,
You suffocated all government organs,
For you to remain a strong man of power
Your  horsemen were villains of villains,
To make you think that one tribe is special enough,
To enjoy political favour in their maximum stupidity,
You condemned Kenya to linger amid despair and mire
With your useless Nyayo philosophy,
That was self-suspicious and derisive to reason,
Making Universities submissive to KANU,
Your Political part that was a mere terror wing,
Chaired by Ezekiel Barangetuny the illiterate,
Who called Karl Marx as Karo Mariko,
He thought that presidential dialogue is food,
Expensive food sold by Kikuyus in Nairobi Hotel,
Your chief aim was to suffocate education,
Campaigning for villages polytechnics,
While you are  a heavyweight torturer of Dons
You; Moi , your name is a curse and public earache.

Daniel Branch of Warwick bemoans you dearly,
in his oeuvre of Hope and Despair for Kenyan people,
He often cites;You shot Robert Ouko the first Bullet,
In the head before you plugged out his eyes,
You ignored his cry for forgiveness and mercy,
Then you dumped his cadaver in the Ahero forest,
For it to be eaten by hyenas, black ants and scorpions

It is epical knowledge  among Kenyans,
But at most the people of Trans Nzoia and Bungoma
That when Masinde Muliro died in the plane
The King's Horseman was around, in the plane
Wielding ammonium gun in his pocket.

Charles Rubia and Matiba Kenneth were unlucky,
They both went mad while in the torture chamber,
Koigi wa Wamwere aged while in Kamiti  prison,
Raila Odinga lost his daer testicles while detained,
You punctured his left eye, he always mobs dears,
Every minute and second, and i am sure you Moi
You can't regret and feel for him, if he was your son?
Your horsemen thoroughly flogged Wangare Mathai
the Nobel Laureate,she won the Prize for nothing,
Other than her successful staving of  the pains
From the ferocious whips by your Kalenjin police,
You jailed and jailed people in Kamiti and Manyan
As if your were possessed by the devil of imprisoning
Or may  be you were possessed, were you ?

You fuelled the tribal clashes in Molo,
You motivated Sabaoits to **** the Bukusu,
You chased teachers of Kisii,Luhyia and Luo tribes
From your village of Baringo,where people starve
for no other reason that was genuine and patriotic
But out of your urge of ethnic sadism.

you made us to sing lame poems;
Jogoo !  Nyayo!Jogoo !  Nyayo!
Jogoo !  Nyayo!Jogoo !  Nyayo!
Jogoo !  Nyayo!Jogoo !  Nyayo!
think about , what were we saying?

You owe apology to the people of Kenya
and all others in the diaspora,
For  the stark misrule and reign of tyranny
You perpetrated on them for two decades,
Your ninety years of life are not a blessing,
But God's timing for you to contrite
To repent and repent  your heinous sins,
I personally wish you not  happy birth day
But humanity wants you  to apologize ,
To those  unhappy families and communities
That you detained and killed their kins.
Advise to Daniel Moi on his 90th birth day
jonchius Sep 2015
entering year 2000
rewinding vhs tape
installing napster client
anticipating victorious gore
bursting dot-com bubble
blocking tomorrow's nostalgia
commemorating festival tragedy
examining supersonic concorde
watching election coverage
recounting inconvenient truths
puzzling interface design
booing nuc-u-lar president

rising black monolith
editing non-linear encyclopedia
feeling inaugurally bushed
reliving century's dawn
unchanging state flag
processing royal massacre
escaping insane asylum
sensing impending collapse
perusing city guide
collapsing contemporary structures
initiating quixotic peacekeeping
ignoring conscription threats

entering year 2002
reporting unfortunate pearl
relaxing shotgun porch
exploding roadside bombs
addressing thousand followers
hugging financial meltdown
writing resembling skylines
shocking archipelagic bursts
processing theatrical disaster
tightening homeland security

entering year 2003
proliferating elegant telegnosis
rejecting freedom fries
blazing wartime trails
toppling dictatorial statue
unfurling "mission accomplished"
handling continental blackout
ejecting coronal masses

entering year 2004
flashing multiple sobriquets
populating dorm-roomy website
high-grossing aramaic movie
generating tunnel vision
rushing national anthem
parading goth athletes
letting games begin
accepting soviet passports
continuing obscure flumadiddle
lunar-eclipsing world series
two-terming republican regime
declining personality cult
glowing orange revolution
eroding periglacial drumlins
inundating lacustrine basins
exciting geomorphological processes
enduring tumultuous tsunami

entering year 2005
blasting "galvanize" repeatedly
unforgiving cyclonic scenario
printing controversial drawing
sketching cartoon prophet
overturning hurricane alphabet
rigging medal count
preparing new horizons
rejecting flash sites

entering year 2006
setting plutonian destination
synchronizing new horizons
sighting stellar foison
maintaining feudal system
emerging microblogging service
reading ancient tweets
rotating golden statue
mounting social debt
protesting planetary demotion
forecasting catastrophic recession
executing "innocent" dictator

entering year 2007
declining share prices
building ruby railroad
lifting presidential term-limits
perpetuating oil-rich dictatorships
falling interstate bridge
slugging giant bonds
clothing blackwater mercenaries
disappearing internet personalities
unforgiving writers strike

entering year 2008
stealing variable thunders
relaxing domain names
letting games continue
exploding sunrise propane
requesting birth certificate
electing another suit
disappointing orthodox republicans
microblogging maximal meltdown

entering year 2009
inaugurating new president
encountering bear markets
cackling risible laughter
dying pop king
deleting neolithic internet

entering year 2010
collapsing presidential palace
prospering cinematic avatar
pronouncing eyjafjallajökull effortlessly
"kettling riot police
flaming cop cruiser"
blasting text-based vuvuzelas
leaking diplomatic cables
fading pre-twitter memories
self-immolating street vendor

entering year 2011
"enervating nine-point quake
propagating harbor wave
inundating nuclear plant
irradiating unclear fates"
raging mid-eastern spring
throwing body asea
locating trojan asteroid
penetrating financial throughfare
resonating oral amplifier
blazing verdant material

entering year 2012
rising chubby dictator
gentrifying weird twitter
exploding next month
intriguing "fake" passport
proliferating single-hued avatars
surging sandy cyclone
inhabiting alternate universe
manipulating another election
rigging people's ballots
perpetuating manipulated world
fulfilling megalomaniac urges
surviving previous apocalypse
surviving another baktun

entering year 2013
descending rogue meteor
encoding festival weekend
obfuscating's very own
approving snow den
searching yaya island
soaking wet veld

entering year 2014
missing plane geometry?
annexing peninsular territory
printing powdered medication
forecasting meteoric boomtime
prevailing monochromatic identity
avoiding aviation accidents
determining auspicious date
revising deactivation plans
reliving years 2000-2014
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
what a ****-pile of ******* (petition rendered
on the hyphenated word compound
i wanted to correct- yeah, all the dudes can hide,
i tried the Oxford crew, but instead
i just got American  colonialism:
the part where you say: i said the funnier joke,
therefore i'm funnier,
TEAM U.S.A.! yeah! **** yeah! let's keep it as
just that... TEAM U.S.A. GO!
we're aiming for sushi right now...
and i love the fact that Green Day's
when September ends is a sidelining the 9/11,
ever you mind dialling 911...
oh, because i was the fascist, tell that to your mother
when baking bagels, ****...
i don't like the way poetry
tries to incubate violence as the non-existence of,
i hate that poetry is written by *******...
i ******* hate these goody-two-shoes more
than i'd care to think abut ******,
who will, given enough time,
become a fetish subject for historians when
we reach a historical threshold,
give it 1000 years he's be a mythological Barbarossa...
that's what i said about him not being
a unicorn.... give it 1000 years and he'll end up
being a hero, just before the
historians make a fetish out of them like they did
with Genghis Khan...
they'll talk about the autobahn before they
speak of the holocaust and constructing Israel,
which we are assured, by fake-socialists
taking on communism by sitting on a train floor...
if that guy Corbyn is a socialist then i'm Comrade
Mao... you never experienced socialism,
i hardly think you're able, like you
said that former feudal made communist
factions were predestined failures of capitalism...
i know you'll fail being communists,
the Chinese are in charge...
you, aren't, going, anywhere!
yeah, believe the socialist sitting on the train floor...
that ******* comes last...
and don't try that fascist tactic for me ti speak clean...
i'm not going to speak with the everyday citizens' speech
talking to the queen... no, i flap the tongue
you provide the wind and the winding,
schooling in over, so is shooing into lining up...
page 64 of Valis:
either knowledge through the sense organs and
is noun-categorised (some say called)
empirical knowledge, or it's arises within your head
and it's called a priori -
i don't see a problem? do you? well...
isn't a posteriori dismissive of empiricism?
to reach a posteriori knowledge you have to dismiss
empirical involvement... also to mind:
there are aren't any sense organs as such.... i'd like
to thin there are... but deaf people wouldn't consider
their ears to be organs, they're still using sign language
and continue living, neither are eyes organs
given Braille... Philip K. **** had more insight on Kant
high on amphetamines than Hegel ever did...
the basic implant? God... a few people
have escaped the a priori and a posteriori argument
for God, most were seduced by atheism
trying to relieve themselves of the argument being
argued let alone argued for a non-existence of such being,
arguing alone proved the argument to be fallacy riddled,
i.e. / as in: it was argued in the first place... for no reason...
i mean we're talking mutation:
how to mutate a priori hexagonal
               through the empirical medium pentagonal
into a posteriori hex once more...
                   the problem is searching for God in
the medium, the Cartesian substance,
the trial and error coin-flip, empiricism isn't about that,
empiricism is about the necessity of error,
i'm bothered about whether God was implanted
in us as necessarily, or whether he emerged to our
a priori mind from the medium of empiricism -
i call that a Darwinian fallacy, i don't think
the human brain can consolidate a harmonious
coexistence with self-belief and being a Buddhist...
the foremost concern is not whether:
god created man, or whether man created god...
we're talking whether the two ever coincided with
needing proof...
                               obviously not.
that part about being a Buddhist? that's shrapnel...
most of us have so much self-belief that we become
eager labourers, and hardly complain,
because the billionaires have ferrets for a haircut.
but as i said, the easiest, aphorism type of reading
Kant doesn't come from Nietzsche, it actually
comes from Philip K. **** in the bookValis...
empiricism was always going to be a watery product,
rigging scientific results, i mean lying about the results
would end up diluting a bottle of whiskey so it looked
like beer and tasted like a 20% voltage on the tongue
pallet: hardly numbing.
so the three tiers: one before, one intermediately,
and one after...
                           how a hexagon passes
through a pentagon and remains a hexagon...
or how a hexagon passes through a pentagon and ends
up a pentagon....
or how a pentagon passes through a pentagon
and ends up a hexagon...
                                             or more simply?
Bleep Beers... or Bibi (when you say b b and then add the
ee, umlaut arithmetic to double up on) -
no, i don't place my belief in the existence of god
from an a priori suggestion, as if i was to invent it...
to later discredit such a belief with a well argued augmentation
from the inheritance to later dispose of such an argument
in the charity shop of the a posteori stance...
that wouldn't excuse or explain the religious inheritance
of the Kippah or the Hijab...
who would be dumb enough to originate having to wear
a Hijab from not having experienced some sort
of necessity of divination? they would have had too experienced
something outer-worldly... god is too ridiculous to
be an a priori or an a posteriori concept...
but he's just ridiculously worthwhile the unifying
concept of phenomenology in that grand empirical theatre...
which means only one thing... our caving in and mining
god in the realm of the a priori is yet another
reality check -
                         summary:
i'm still bothered why not affiliating the hyphen to that
letter will make not meaningful reference, i.e.:
a-        (without)
                                   which means, a priori
(without a prior / without a beginning)
                       which means, a posteriori
           (without an after, without an end) -
it doesn't mean whether you have god as an implant,
whether you get rid of the implant
after experiencing the empirical medium,
you'll nonetheless experience the medium of the pentagon,
establish that sense-organs are not really organs,
because classifying something as an organic makes
life essentially a continuum, but blind men live long
after the eyes are gone...
                    i'm just saying that god as an idea
is hardly a worthy unit, which ideas are, concentrated
thoughts that cannot align themselves to either
telepathy or narration... they're immovable...
unshaken, undisturbed...
i'm just saying we're too intelligent to seek god
in the a priori realm or the a posteriori realm of things...
we were not actually ever going to find him
on the shores of Ireland or Florida...
it's not that ridiculous to find him on the Atlantic...
he's quantum physics after all, pocket presence...
isolated proof... never a collectivisation to enable
politicised coherence... it's a quantum experience,
a quantum experience that without atoms
gets so much stigmatisation as Judaism proves;
the mock-joke of Moses rummaging realities rather than
reality in the desert to the count of 40 years...
yeah... and later the idea of the multiverse...
that's not funny mate... it's horrid...
but there you are safe in democracy... but you're
used to reading the media outlets citing child abuse...
well... what are we missing? APPLAUSE! APPLAUSE!
ENCORE!
At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,
And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away:
"Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!"
Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: "'Fore God I am no coward;
But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear,
And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick.
We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?"

Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: "I know you are no coward;
You fly them for a moment to fight with them again.
But I've ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore.
I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard,
To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain."

So Lord Howard passed away with five ships of war that day,
Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven;
But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land
Very carefully and slow,
Men of Bideford in Devon,
And we laid them on the ballast down below;
For we brought them all aboard,
And they blest him in their pain, that they were not left to Spain,
To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord.

He had only a hundred ****** to work the ship and to fight,
And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight,
With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow.
"Shall we fight or shall we fly?
Good Sir Richard, tell us now,
For to fight is but to die!
There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set."
And Sir Richard said again: "We be all good English men.
Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,
For I never turned my back upon Don or devil yet."

Sir Richard spoke and he laughed, and we roared a hurrah, and so
The little Revenge ran on sheer into the heart of the foe,
With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below;
For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen,
And the little Revenge ran on through the long sea-lane between.

Thousands of their soldiers looked down from their decks and laughed,
Thousands of their ****** made mock at the mad little craft
Running on and on, till delayed
By their mountain-like San Philip that, of fifteen hundred tons,
And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns,
Took the breath from our sails, and we stayed.

And while now the great San Philip hung above us like a cloud
Whence the thunderbolt will fall
Long and loud,
Four galleons drew away
From the Spanish fleet that day,
And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay,
And the battle-thunder broke from them all.

But anon the great San Philip, she bethought herself and went
Having that within her womb that had left her ill content;
And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,
For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers,
And a dozen times we shook 'em off as a dog that shakes his ears
When he leaps from the water to the land.

And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea,
But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.
Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came,
Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and flame;
Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame.
For some were sunk and many were shattered, and so could fight us no more -
God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?

For he said "Fight on! fight on!"
Though his vessel was all but a wreck;
And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone,
With a grisly wound to be dressed he had left the deck,
But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead,
And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head,
And he said "Fight on! fight on!"

And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer sea,
And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring;
But they dared not touch us again, for they feared that we still could sting,
So they watched what the end would be.
And we had not fought them in vain,
But in perilous plight were we,
Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain,
And half of the rest of us maimed for life
In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife;
And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold,
And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it spent;
And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side;
But Sir Richard cried in his English pride,
"We have fought such a fight for a day and a night
As may never be fought again!
We have won great glory, my men!
And a day less or more
At sea or ashore,
We die -does it matter when?
Sink me the ship, Master Gunner -sink her, split her in twain!
Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!"

And the gunner said "Ay, ay," but the ****** made reply:
"We have children, we have wives,
And the Lord hath spared our lives.
We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us go;
We shall live to fight again and to strike another blow."
And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe.

And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then,
Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last,
And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace;
But he rose upon their decks, and he cried:
"I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true;
I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do:
With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Grenville die!"
And he fell upon their decks, and he died.

And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true,
And had holden the power and glory of Spain so cheap
That he dared her with one little ship and his English few;
Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew,
But they sank his body with honour down into the deep,
And they manned the Revenge with a swarthier alien crew,
And away she sailed with her loss and longed for her own;
When a wind from the lands they had ruined awoke from sleep,
And the water began to heave and the weather to moan,
And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew,
And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew,
Till it smote on their hulls and their sails and their masts and their flags,
And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shattered navy of Spain,
And the little Revenge herself went down by the island crags
To be lost evermore in the main.
1
Flood-Tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour high—I see you also face
   to face.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious
   you are to me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning
   home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more
   to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.

2
The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the
   day,
The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme, myself disintegrated, every
   one disintegrated yet part of the scheme,
The similitudes of the past and those of the future,
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on
   the walk in the street and the passage over the river,
The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away,
The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,
The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others.

Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to
   shore,
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the
   heights of Brooklyn to the south and east,
Others will see the islands large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half
   an hour high,
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others
   will see them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the
   falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide.

3
It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not,
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many
   generations hence,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the
   bright flow, I was refresh’d,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift
   current, I stood yet was hurried,
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the
   thick-stemm’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.

I too many and many a time cross’d the river of old,
Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air
   floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,
Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left
   the rest in strong shadow,
Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the
   south,
Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,
Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,
Look’d at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my
   head in the sunlit water,
Look’d on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward,
Look’d on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,
Look’d toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving,
Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,
Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at
   anchor,
The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars,
The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender
   serpentine pennants,
The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their
   pilothouses,

The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the
   wheels,
The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the
   frolic-some crests and glistening,
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the
   granite storehouses by the docks,
On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank’d on
   each side by the barges, the hay-boat, the belated lighter,
On the neighboring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys burning
   high and glaringly into the night,
Casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and yellow
   light over the tops of houses, and down into the clefts of
   streets.

4
These and all else were to me the same as they are to you,
I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river,
The men and women I saw were all near to me,
Others the same-others who look back on me because I look’d forward
   to them,
(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night.)

5
What is it then between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails
   not,
I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,
I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the
   waters around it,
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,
In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me,
In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon
   me,
I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution,
I too had receiv’d identity by my body,
That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew I
   should be of my body.

6
It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
The dark threw its patches down upon me also,

The best I had done seem’d to me blank and suspicious,
My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality
   meagre?
Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil,
I am he who knew what it was to be evil,
I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,
Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d,
Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,
Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant,
The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me.
The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not
   wanting,

Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these
   wanting,
Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest,
Was call’d by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as
   they saw me approaching or passing,
Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of
   their flesh against me as I sat,
Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet
   never told them a word,
Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing,
   sleeping,
Play’d the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,
The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we
   like,
Or as small as we like, or both great and small.

7
Closer yet I approach you,
What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you—I laid in my
   stores in advance,
I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born.

Who was to know what should come home to me?
Who knows but I am enjoying this?
Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you
   now, for all you cannot see me?

8
Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than
   mast-hemm’d Manhattan?
River and sunset and scallop-edg’d waves of flood-tide?
The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the
   twilight, and the belated lighter?

What gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with
   voices I love call me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as
   approach?
What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that
   looks in my face?
Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you?

We understand then do we not?
What I promis’d without mentioning it, have you not accepted?
What the study could not teach—what the preaching could not
   accomplish is accomplish’d, is it not?

9
Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg’d waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the
   men and women generations after me!
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of
   Brooklyn!
Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!
Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!
Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public
   assembly!
Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my
   nighest name!
Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or
   actress!
Play the old role, the role that is great or small according as one
   makes it!
Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be
   looking upon you;
Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet
   haste with the hasting current;
Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in
   the air;
Receive the summer sky, you water, and faithfully hold it till all
   downcast eyes have time to take it from you!
Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any
   one’s head, in the sunlit water!
Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sail’d
   schooners, sloops, lighters!
Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lower’d at sunset!
Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at
   nightfall! cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses!

Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are,
You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul,
About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinest
   aromas,
Thrive, cities—bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and
   sufficient rivers,
Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual,
Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting.

You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers,
We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate
   henceforward,
Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves
   from us,
We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently
   within us,
We fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also,
You furnish your parts toward eternity,
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.
RH 78 Feb 2015
17 Shattered skulls bobbing on an ocean of oil.
The crawling skin of sailer souls ready to recoil.

No more rigging 1 less oar.
Beast from the deep allowed to surface once more.

The crows nest falls the skies turn black.
Men overboard who are never coming back.

No more rigging 1 less oar.
Beast from the deep returns to the seabed once more.
Cori MacNaughton Oct 2015
She had been at sea for three decades
her first voyage at age eighteen
a week after her marriage
in the year of our Lord 1883

She married a sailing man
captain of his own ship
handsome, bearded and tall
a fine commander of his men
as they searched the sea for whales

She loved life at sea
and could imagine no other
the motion of the ship
the sounds of the rigging and the sails
the quiet companionship
with her husband every evening

She was beloved by her husband’s men
whom she mothered well
having had no sons of her own
but nurtured and healed
patched and sewed
bloodied and broken hearts and men

Often she came out on deck
for she knew when they would find them
and though she was in the stern
and the lookout was high in the crow's nest
she saw many whales they missed

She thrilled each time she saw them
awed by their sheer size
marveling at their strength
humbled by their beauty
careful to hide her feelings

Sometimes she could feel
when a whale would blow
and she would call to the first mate
so the men looked at her
as the whale passed unseen

Most times she silently prayed
willing the lookout to search
the wrong spot of ocean
and felt again the pang
of disloyalty to her husband
for he commanded a whaling ship

But then the lookout's call came
"Thar she blows!"
and the men sprang to action
taking after the whale in longboats
while she escaped below

She had seen before the killing
she would not watch again
too many whales succumbed
to exploding harpoons
and a death horrifyingly cruel

And she wondered
what would happen
if only whales could scream . . .
Originally written on 4 Feb 2006 at 11:57 PM.

This poem is very close to my heart, as I have been strongly morally opposed to whaling since childhood, and it was inspired by the following wrenching quote:

The methods have hardly evolved since Dr. Harry D. Lillie worked as a ship's doctor on a whaling expedition in the Antarctic in 1946:

"If we can imagine a horse having two or three explosive spears stuck into its stomach and being made to pull a butcher's truck through the streets of London while it pours blood in the gutter, we shall have an idea of the present method of killing. The gunners themselves admit that if whales could scream the industry would stop, for nobody would be able to stand it."

I recently read the wonderful book "Fluke, or I know Why the Winged Whale Sings" by Christopher Moore, in which , though it is a work of (mostly) humorous fiction, he recounts a factual occurrence of a mother whale attempting to protect her calf from the Japanese whaling ship pursuing them.  In Japan, whales are considered to be nothing more than fish, with therefore no moral reason not to hunt them to extinction, but her actions showed the whalers onboard the ship that she truly displayed a mammalian motherly love, and moved many of them to tears.  

There is still room for hope, but we have to act NOW, and drag our government officials into the 21st century kicking and screaming if need be.
How long will our bewildered heirs
marooned in possessions not theirs
puzzle at disposing of these three
cunning feignings of hard candy in glass-
the striped little pillowlike mock-sweets,
the flared end-twists as of transparent paper?

No clue will be attached, no trace
of the sunny day of their purchase,
at a glittering shop a few doors
up from Harry's Bar, a disappointing place
for all its testaments from Hemingway.
The Grand Canal was also aglitter
while the lesser canals lay in the shade
like snakes, flicking wet tongues
and gliding to green rendezvous.

The immaculate salesgirl, in her aloof
Italian succulence, sized us up,
a middle-aged American couple,
as unserious shoppers who,
still half jet-lagged, would cling to their lire
in the face of any enchanted vase
or ethereal wineglass that might shatter
in the luggage going home.

Yet we wanted something, something small ....
This? No ... How much is ten thousand? Dizzy,
at last we decided. She wrapped
the three glass candies, the cheapest
items in the shop, with a showy care
worthy of crown jewels-tissue,
tape, and tissue again sprang up
beneath her blood-red fingernails,
plus a jack-in-the-box-shaped paper bag
adorned with harlequin lozenges, sad
though she surely was, on her feet waiting
all day for a wild rich Arab, a compulsive Japanese.
Grazie, signor ... grazie, signora ... ciao.

Nor will our thing-weary heirs decipher
the little repair, the reattached triangle
of glass from the paper-imitating end-twist,
its mending a labor of love in the cellar,
by winter light, by the man of the house,
mixing transparent epoxy and rigging
a clever small clamp as if to keep
intact the time that we, alive,
had spent in the feathery bed
at the Europa e Regina.
beth fwoah dream Mar 2017
everything of
me was choir-song

every bolt of
air,
every summer
moon,
every drop of
cooling rain,

in spring i
melted like
a hedgerow,
in gold and
sky-bronze,

in summer i
gathered the sky
to my branches
green with shadows
of longing,

in autumn i trembled
downwards like a
girl unwinding her
hair,

and in winter i froze
on the doorstep
all black branch
and cold
rigging on
a barren ship,

everything of me
was choir-song and
i had the most
beautiful
purple throat,

i was a soft
melody of love
on a strange
moody day.
Cori MacNaughton Jun 2015
It was after we passed Moby’s Dock
that Ebony met her first thresher shark

He was five feet long or so
two feet shark, three feet tail,
and had just been pulled from the surf
to be proudly displayed
by the fisherman who had caught him

Ebony stood transfixed
her every muscle poised
her feathered tail twitched
as she leaned closer to inspect
and then recoiled from this cold-blooded beauty
still dressed in fleetingly iridescent
blues and greens and purples -

As the sun’s fading beams highlighted
the magnificence of this dying shark
I mourned his loss that night.

The noise and tourists
in the Pier’s arcades and bumper cars
did not detract from the peacefulness
of the Pacific in her chaos
for this was August
and they would soon go home

I watched a distant storm at sea
flashing fire against the deepening twilight
I stood, and Ebony,
gazing at the flashes of lightning

My hand felt her softness and warmth
as I stroked the waves of her black fur
relishing the cool wind on my face
listening to the rigging
of the boats resting at anchor off the Pier

Thinking about thresher sharks
Willing them away
from this place with its fishermen
and cold, baited hooks

Cori MacNaughton
13 Sept 2000
This is one of my very favorites among all the pieces I have ever written.  I have read it in public on many occasions, though this is the first time it appears in print.

Okay, so the initial incident described with the thresher shark actually took place on the Venice Pier, and my mom was with us.  ;-)  At the time we lived in Santa Monica in-between the two piers, and we spent a lot of afternoons and evenings walking on the beach and piers.  Everyone on the beaches knew and loved my dog, a lovely and beautifully mannered purebred Newfoundland, and even the cops knew her by name.  This was not long after a concerted effort by private citizens saved the historic 1909 wooden pier from destruction at the hands of historically myopic local government officials.  

It was a wonderful place and time.
Paul M Chafer Sep 2010
Antonia is such a good swimmer,
She often swims in the sea,
Where she met a friendly dolphin,
Who she invited back for tea.

There were plates of jam sandwiches,
Ice-cream, with jelly in a fancy dish,
Vanilla slices and chocolate cake,
Oh, and of course, lots of fish.

Then the dolphin shared a story,
Of a far off-distant land,
Even though his voice was very squeaky,
Antonia could easily understand.

The story told of mermaids,
Magic songs upon their lips,
Their singing enticing sailors,
From the rigging and decks of ships.

Though, the sailors were not harmed,
Only enchanted in a drowsy sleep,
Dreaming in the mermaid kingdom,
Beneath the ocean cool and deep.

The mermaids made a prophecy,
Of the sailors promised release,
When mankind stopped all wars,
And had learned to live in peace.

Antonia thought, ‘how very wise’,
Watching waves upon the sea,
From the beach, she waved goodbye,
To the dolphin who came for tea.
Written for children © copyright with Author
Francie Lynch Jun 2018
We're mostly gregarious and polite,
Like most of you.
We too have our diplomatic trips 'n bumps;
We never cozied to Dicky;
But welcomed ex-pat refugees
For safe and sound reasons.
After the jimmy-rigging, how many re-pated?

And we gagged on the impeachables, all fuzzy and bitter.
He called the father that ******* in Ottawa;
And Pierre wore that moniker like The Order of Canada.
When you're not liked by one, you're a dove.

You should visit CANDU.wow
It has it all.

How is Supreme Leader managing?
Are his...
Are my people... sitting at attention.

We could real news a bomb a la Kim Jong,
Or flip a stone down at Port Huron.
We won't.
But we could if we weren't
The Great White North, so accommodating, so polite,
So Coo loo coo coo coo coo coo cooo! nice...
(for now)
The thing about dictators is, you don't know you have one til it's too late.
The CANDU is the largest nuclear reactor in the world, and used for all the ingredients needed for heat and intense heat.
There are 35 million Canadians who are the biggest importers of merchandise from 35 States, south of the border. A lot of people are going to be out of work.
"Coo loo coo..." is the theme song to the Bob and Doug McKenzie show on Second City.
Valerie Watts Jul 2013
The rigger journeyman was city bred,
But Cumberland was in his bones,
He saw the hills above the doors,
He saw the fells above the roofs
And when the great pain came,
His eyes belonged to them again.

By Ruskin Street he stopped to choke
At forty six, his wife beside,
My father's line revealed to me,
A farming, rigging family tree.

His place of death recorded so,
Not 'in' or 'at' but 'by' they wrote,
Impressionistic, vague, but true,
Or careless hand for riggers, who
In city great of small account
By Ruskin Street,
Out for the count...


The journey ends
And Benson, male,
No sails will mend.
On finding Victorian death certificate of ancestor.
That was then and now is there
As sister Sara pointed out
We were young and stupid
But our ship harbored no care

The oak was new , fresh the smell
We climbed the rigging
of the mast of life
so fast , so well

"Get down you fools"
The old crusted would say
Seasoned in salt from life's
crashing waves and spray

We just laughed and brayed
Almost depraved
"Get lost old fool"
We were so cruel

We weighed our anchor
and dropped our sails
Little we knew
of the seas of Hell

The distant thunder
lightning's warning
It didn't scare us
Life was ours to plunder

But the oak did gray
It bent and buckled
The rigging's rope broke
some of us tumbled

Beaten and battered
We limped into our ports
There was no laughter
from our fellow cohorts

The crossing is done
Sun seasoned in wear
We are the old fools . . .
That was then and now is there
Inspired by Sara Fielder's poem "This is this"
First: a soft statement
tolled out to a vacant page
ringing, and rebounding at the edges
as a quiet ripple set
to subtly amplify the light
of imagination.
The stone was dropped by --
what?
A hand that is as old as, or is older
than God.
It pushes through the water like a fish
without fins, it invisibly reshelves
the fluid memories from below
to above, below
to above until at last the rock,
the stone that is a soft statement at the top
of a once-vacant page,
clacks into place on the darker underside.

And then the poetry continues:
Crumpled Lightning;
A hailstorm of Words; Visions; Lines: Sparks;
all angled to mirror the space occupied by you,
even as it speaks of something else entirely,
even plummeting from every direction
to the point they blur - left to right, top to bottom -
the poem is a sheet of water,
a prism of distorted imagination showing you there,
you, clear as day, sharp as life
something, some piece of a thing, is made so clear
to you, a facet of life, a law of reality, or the inner clockwork
of a mind; you see just that much more of yourself
and that space you occupy in air, it is
that, though it may be masked by its magnitude, or its detail,
that is the quality what has wrapped your mind in a net.

So then the poetry concludes
with what?
Some three pillared, immovable declaration?
One scarcely held breath in the wind?
A clot of sky? A vein of iron?
You never fully expect it, no matter how often you are told.
Somehow, very likely inexplicably,
you recall some quality about beginnings,
drawing your eye to the top of the page
that started it all. The
First: a soft statement
an echo freshly familiar, despite
its elder weight; it was there all along
an echo, but an anchor of a stone
built for tethering all that poetry
to the underside of your mind.
The albatross once filled the skies
Cormorants watched silent, from the shore
These are echoes of times long ago
There's nothing here for them any more

The coastline littered with sunken ships
Villages full of ghosts
Empty buildings and empty lives
Where just the sea gulls act as hosts

Oceans away lads, Oceans away
Out past the breakers and out to the sea
Oceans away lads, Oceans away
Out on the Ocean, where my soul is set free

The cod stocks have dwindled
There was no need to stay
There's no catch of the day, son
From here to Gaspe'

The canneries shuttered
The landscape has changed
I may be a sailor
But, my life's rearranged

Oceans away lads, Oceans away
Out past the breakers and out to the sea
Oceans away lads, Oceans away
Out on the Ocean, where my soul is set free




The Grand Banks are empty
Our boats are in hock
There's nothing that grows here
Except depression and rock

While others moved onward
I'll stay 'till I'm dead
Now, I feed off the tourists
I work the casinos instead

Oceans away lads, Oceans away
Out past the breakers and out to the sea
Oceans away lads, Oceans away
Out on the Ocean, where my soul is set free

The salt air still calls me
The wind in my sails
The sound of the rigging
Heading off to Kinsale

The coastline is empty
Where Ghost towns now stand
It used to be vibrant
But now just sea grass and sand

Oceans Away Lads, Oceans Away
On out past the breakers, and out to the see
Oceans away lads, Oceans Away
I still am a sailor, and I always will be
Kyle Kulseth Apr 2015
Plot a course through downtown doors
then drift along the concrete shores
of asphalt oceans navigated
          under stars
          imitating
     broken curbside glass--
     over crunching gravel miles
          measured in half-hours
and meted out in heavy, fogging breaths
          and squinting, midnight eyes...

Counted out the blocks, counted steps
and concrete squares by metered
three-four thoughts dancing across
     reflected skylines, just behind the eyes.

Each step's a held breath,
each footfall a prayer on crumpled paper,
each set of shoulders, a hanger for...

                                        coats are homes
                                             for hands
                                    rolling up in pockets
fishing for some solid anchor,
sinking into years of walks and silent words like these.

                                   * * *

Listing hard, adrift for years
     water-logged and pocked--
                    no anchor--
shredded sails and leaning masts
                    tell stories
                  of deck fires:
                   leaping rats,
             and charred strakes

Clear deck,
               empty hold,
                              abandoned helm.
                     this coat's Atlantic fog.
Frayed rigging like cobwebs stretch
          down and across
like lines on faces aged by the frost
          on midnight walks.

Strike the colors, mate...
Admit you're lost.
Was worried this one might seem a little...overbearing? Melodramatic? I kinda like how it turned out, though.
Castiel Apr 2014
The rigging is
set, Captain.
Brown rope, aye,
secured tightly - aye,
can be adjusted.
Here, I'll stand on this
chair and see how
it's looking - aye,
Captain, it's proper
tight now, it will
function just
well enough, sir.
Oh, Captain, the sea;
I can see the
stormy waves,
black and
turmoiled. Aye,
Captain, all rigging
set. All hands on
deck, yessir.
We can't very well set
sail with a chair on the
deck, Captain.
Permission to kick
it away?
I'm assuming the message in this one is fairly clear?

Anyway, this isn't about me, for any of you concerned.
AW Nov 2021
How?
If even there were
A force in this universe
Sustaining life beyond just breath
Beyond this web of neurons
Firing in predictable patterns
Prescribing every inclination and desire
A flame in which is fully forged
The consciousness that
Dreams and dares all things
Beyond our mere survival

If even there were such a force
How would it be made known?
How does a foundation work
When the fundamental building blocks
Are massless, pointlike?
As much wave as particle
Basking in the sunlight of uncertainty
Existing in duality

How, when everything else is
Nothingness
A void a million billion times more extensive
Than anything substantial
That surrounds it
A vacuum that renders
The remaining matter pointless
How could force be hollow
Yet encompass all
What does it all mean
When all of matter falls in between

This unseen field
Rippling, wriggling, rigging
Everything it fills with the seedlings of decay
Each day
Moving along the breakdown towards
Entropy
Splendid chaos,
Almost too perfect to be called such

How could we not see
The force
Still elusive, but unchanged
Striking a balance
Between fate and volatility
The neverending battle
That morphs each how into a why
The demon and the butterfly
The Science Sessions
Hal Loyd Denton Jun 2013
Little effects that quickly infuse the problematic and they can do great work and what’s better
We will start this journey on a night beach in the Mediterranean we sit alone a roaring bon fire
Ignites the immediate and the far reaching the mind also is ablaze the darkness sits as a stretch
Of measurable consciousness comfortable broodiness with a touch of spell binding running
Through it the lips have spoken wonder into this place then you board a ship bound for ancient
Troy you are below deck surrounded by the richest wood paneling the room you are mixing
Feelings with the timbers and the sweet tortuous sounds as the ship ploughs through the
Turbulent waters you go top side standing by the rigging in the gathering darkness the sails
Are full the wind howls ever so gently as the ship slips through the waters life as well has waters
You stand in this present world the real of earth and sky but with power of thought instantly
You flex mental powers your sum total is told in all the waves of yesterday that break as sweet
Tremors that contain smiles that hold endearments that are without price a parents hug long
Lost to deaths foreboding reality springs anew and it holds as much feeling if not more because
Of separation and the tears and pain that are raw and immediate the unbreakable bond that
Has to be experienced through that fleeting emboldened treasure of nuance you hold your
Hands over objects that are prized in themselves they can be ordinary but by memory they are
Addressed in true terms of their sacred effect on you its automatic when you take the hand of a
Child innocence courses into your soul you have collided with your own self in those tender
Days of longing for a world that was absent of harshness and magic was real you accessed life
Truly with features that were real intuitively they were the whole of storybook treasures or by
Advancing years the wife of youth is found by tender recall she frets and speaks of negative
Aspects of herself she doesn’t know love never ever looks in that way his eyes are filled with
That sweet and beautiful girl she is ageless and without having to create it as truth she only
Improves with age everything about her is softer she is more giving wiser and as she finds her
True self it commands more mature pure love and the years are viewed through the mist in his
Eyes caused by gratefulness and thankfulness that he was so blessed to be given such a one as a
Life’s mate from the fragile nuance life can and is transformed bitter turned sweet you
Customize and make life fitting and beholding nightmares will hold no tangible fears when you
Interject the lovely and the possibilities that live in the extraordinary circumference that can be
Found in the simple but profound realness of nuance I started this piece by giving the idea of
Nuance the richness of place and value and wonder that is discovery although loss tries to
Prevail the mind can slip at times the little space just this delightful shadow bewitching as shade
From a tree within this balance a flow a glow burst as the powerful beam found in silver moon
Light the opposite of contentious day here the powerless is visited by the distinctive caring rest
That is able to soften unravel the toughest knots you find the bestowing wisdom that leads to
Victory and peaceful rest where intimidation is thus confounded and you twist free abiding in
Love that always watches and delivers when facing stone walls that are the makings of a
Prison the light of nuance appears and provides the way of escape proceed the glorious garden
of freedom awaits
Beautiful she was,
All sleek pine and cotton wool rigging
A beautiful deck made for a'spying
And a secret cabin boudoir fit for a king

Plenty of nautical miles ahead
Just open sky blue and free
So shiver me timbers and come take my hand
We'll take the Mimosa to sea
Wally du Temple Dec 2016
I sailed the fjords between Powell River and
Drury Inlet to beyond the Salish Sea.
The land itself spoke from mountains, water falls, islets
From bird song and bear splashing fishers
From rutting moose and cougars sharp incisors.
The place has a scale that needs no advisers
But in our bodies felt, sensed in our story talking.
The Chinese spoke of sensing place by the four dignities
Of Standing of Reposing of Sitting or of Walking.
Indigenous peoples of the passage added of Paddling by degrees
For the Haida and Salish sang their paddles to taboos
To the rhythm of the drum in their clan crested canoes.
Trunks transformed indwelling people who swam like trees.
First Nations marked this land, made drawings above sacred screes
As they walked together, to gather, share and thank the spirit saplings.
So Dao-pilgrims in the blue sacred mountains of Japan rang their ramblings.
Now the loggers’ chainsaws were silent like men who had sinned.
I motored now for of wind not a trace -
I could see stories from the slopes, hear tales in the wind.
Modern hieroglyphs spoke from clear-cuts both convex and concave.
Slopes of burgundy and orange bark shaves
Atop the beige hills, and in the gullies the silver drying snags
and the brilliant pink of fire **** tags
A tapestry of  times in work.
A museum of lives that lurk.
Once the logging camps floated close to the head of inlets.
Now rusting red donkeys and cables no longer creak,
Nor do standing spar trees sway near feller notched trunks,
Nor do grappler yarders shriek as men bag booms and
Dump bundles in bull pens.
The names bespeak the work.
Bull buckers, rigging slingers, cat skinners, boom men and whistle punks.
…………………………………………………………………….
Ashore to *** with my dog I saw a ball of crushed bones in ****
Later we heard the evocative howl of a wolf
And my pooch and I go along with the song
Conjoining  with the animal call
In a natural world fearsome, sacred and shared.
---------------------------------------------------------­---
Old bunk houses have tumbled, crumbling fish canneries no longer reek.
Vietnam Draft dodgers and Canucks that followed the loggers forever borrowed -
Their hoisting winches, engines, cutlery, fuel, grease and generators.
While white shells rattled down the ebbing sea.
Listing float homes still grumble when hauled on hard.
Somber silhouettes of teetering totems no longer whisper in westerlies
Near undulating kelp beds of Mamalilakula.
Petroglyphs talk in pictures veiled by vines.
History is a tapestry
And land is the loom.
Every rock, headland, and blissful fearsome bay
Has a silence that speaks when I hear it.
Has a roar of death from peaking storms when I see it.
Beings and things can be heard and seen that
Enter and pass through me to evaporate like mist
From a rain dropped forest fist
And are composted into soil.
Where mountains heavily wade into the sea
To resemble yes the tremble and dissemble
Of the continental shelf.
Where still waters of deception
Hide the tsunamis surging stealth.
Inside the veins of Mother Earth the magmas flow
Beneath fjords where crystalised glaziers glow.
Here sailed I, my dog and catboat
Of ‘Bill Garden’ build
The H. Daniel Hayes
In mountain water stilled
In a golden glory of my remaining days.
In Cascadia the images sang and thrilled
Mamalilikula, Kwak’wala, Namu, Klemtu
The Inlets Jervis, Toba, Bute, and Loughborough.
This is a narative prose poem that emerged from the experienced of a sailor's voyage.
Maggie Emmett Sep 2014
The white bleached corpse of day is fast
- reddened, bloodied -
torn to scarlet shreds of evening
slashed by wild and fiery crimsons.

Light leaching and passing westward
from bridge to bridge
garlands of mist drift up the river

Shadows dart, shelter and linger
blackness creeps and claws
the shades of night

Darkness spills down docks and ditches
fingers through the strands of light
by midnight every dock is still

Moon hangs full, naked and weary
slow stiching silver threads
through tall ships rigging
in the dim and dreary night

A yapping dog disturbs the quiet
more insistent than the stars.


© M.L.Emmett
Response to JW Turner's pictures of the River Thames at sunset
Amy Grindhouse Feb 2014
What I miss most
about you
is those
hidden powder keg stand
salmon net blood stained
scaffold pirate rigging
crumpled roof
dense smoke cloud cabin
dangerous flirtatious biker bar taunting
staggering pool playing
yellow and black liquid haze
full on sensory assault
adventures
we both knew
would never last
a m a n d a Oct 2016
(edited, updated, bigger, longer, richer, and better than ever)
(hilz says hi)
#obviouslyshepaidme
#idonthaveamindofmyown


when your opponent’s husband
(who, by the way,
is an entirely different
human being
than his wife, and is not
running for president
)
has an affair,
or is accused of
****** assault,
the claims are
absolutely
100% true.
the women
must be believed.
he* is
a criminal.

your candidate will go
so far as to invite
some of those women to
the debate to
shame his opponent,
and show
how *supportive
he is
of these women.
(because they are
serving his purpose).

your opponent’s husband
is a liar,
a ******,
a pig.
absolute filth
that should be
thrown in prison.

in fact,
your opponent
is even worse than him,
she attacked
those women. she
didn't believe them.
this is proof of
her hatred
of women.
(oh, the irony is
not lost on me, no sir.)

(also,
let’s pretend that
your candidate didn’t call
that exact man, your
opponent's husband,
a “victim” in regard to
the exact same situation
in 1998.)

oh wait,
i forgot you don’t care about things that
happened any
longer ago
than yesterday. unless we
are talking about
the opponent. because then
OBVIOUSLY
it doesn’t matter
when in time
she said or
did something.)
duh.

(this is what we like
to call a double standard.)

moving right along.

if the same thing
happens to your
own candidate,
accusers come forward,
OBVIOUSLY
everyone else on earth
is lying EXCEPT
him.
in fact,
every accuser (i lost
track of the number)
is an absolute liar,
too ugly for assault,
and getting paid
by a massive
worldwide conspiracy,
controlled by your
political opponent who
you also describe as never
having accomplished anything
in her life.
(strange how that works.)

when your candidate’s
wife does pretty
much the exact same
thing
your opponent did,
(stand by her husband)
proclaim his innocence,
and discredit the claims,
(for which you
label her
a liar,
an enabler,
an enemy of women)
it doesn't matter
anymore, because it
was your wife
saying it.
think about that for a second.

i’m just checking, guys.
i’m just trying to figure this out.

-

you do not like
that your opponent
has money. or seeks power.
that makes
her a disgusting,
horrible,
conniving,
***** *****.
(and DEFINITELY
has nothing to do
with the fact that she is
a woman).

and i guess the thing
that we are all
pretending
(right? we are
pretending this?)
that
she has
more money
than he does.
(she doesn’t).

anywhoo,
but because she has money,
she pays off literally everyone
on this blue planet.

she's probably even
paying me right now.

i'm probably a liberal
operative,
born in a lab,
bred for vengeance,
and the destruction
of these united states,
and this is
the culmination
of my life's work.
i jest.

but in fact,
your candidate has
MORE money
than her.

at least he says he does.
of course to you
this does not
matter and you
see no contradiction
in your thinking.

we don’t even
consider for
a moment
that
he pays
people off.
because, yeah,
billionaires don't
have any political
connections).
but how can we
even prove it?
he refuses
to submit his
tax returns to
the public, after saying
on record that he
would, but
don’t worry about that,
we don't care that he lies.
that’s not suspicious at all.
(for the love
of everything holy,
can you imagine the
fire and brimstone
if obama refused to
release his?!)
i mean it's so
ridiculous it makes me laugh.

alrighty then, moving along, once again.

when she
changes position
on a policy,
she is a liar.
a manipulator.
cannot be
trusted,
a flip-flopper,
being swayed by
special interests.

when he does it,
he is “evolving.”
i can't even say that
with a straight face.
(and let’s not for one
second pretend
he hasn’t flip-flopped
on almost every single
issue (guns, immigration,
foreign issues, his opponent,
nukes, wars, abortion, etc.).
see link at bottom for ***** and giggles.
-

she lies. she’s a liar.
we hate liars.

you use that
as your shield.


he never lies. (a-hem)
he LITERALLY LIES on
video, contradicting
HIMSELF, and his
own campaign,
within minutes.
not even years. minutes.

i mean geez,
it’s not like you
can scour
the internet for
proof or anything.

-

he respects women.
hmmm...let us
look at the evidence, shall we?

calls women accusing him of  ****** assault
ugly, out for money, liars. all of them.
because i guess
attraction = rapeability?
(it does not)
(even though he admitted to doing whatever
he wants to do to women, without asking, in his
own words)
it's on record.

he talks about
young girls
in sexualized terms.
it's on record.

he agreed
that he doesn’t
respect women.
it's on record.

he agreed he was
a ****** predator.
it's on record.

he said it’s dangerous
for one’s wife to work.
it's on record.

he said he loses his
**** when
dinner isn’t on the table.
it's on record.

he said
he can do whatever
he wants to
women because he
is powerful
and rich.
it's on record.

women who
breastfeed are
disgusting.
it's on record.

he doesn’t like
flat chests
or fat girls
it's on record.

all women
are gold diggers.
it's on record.

he doesn’t like to
give a woman
negotiable assets.
it's on record.

dogs,
pigs,
it's on record.

he wants to
repeal roe v wade.
it's on record.

he bragged about
walking into
beauty pageant
dressing rooms
full of naked
teenage girls.
it's on record.

hmph. it’s so hard to
figure this out.

(if i could roll my eyes
any harder they would
pop right out
of my head).

these aren't even
ALL THE THINGS.
straight from
the man's own
godforsaken mouth, unedited!
not opinions.
facts.

-

although his campaign
has received millions
of dollars in free
advertising,
and his entire
life is based
upon being in
the media spotlight,

the entire media
is a left wing
conspiracy.


(unless they report
something positive.
then it's not a conspiracy
anymore, then it's true)

side note.
i guess if he wins,
we can expect to see
just a SERIOUS
overhaul of the election
process, you know,
because it's so rigged.
and the whole thing
will be brilliantly
torn down and remade
within 4 years,
and be without
criticism
before it's time
for re-election.
because he wouldn't
want us all to go
ahead and try to vote
for him again in a
rigged election.
he cares about us.

and the media will just
be torn to shreds,
you know, but still free
and everything is
going to be so fair, you guys.
i mean things are going
to be so fair you
are going to get sick of it.
and really,
he's a super sweet guy
if he accepts the
presidency in an
election he
knows
is rigged.
cuz that's what
any upstanding
citizen would do.

-

she is an insider.
(i.e., what some of us like
to refer to as a professional)

he has been
talking about
running for president
since the
1980’s,
but OBVIOUSLY
HE would never
take money
for favors.
HE hasn't been planning this.
HE would never
seek power.
HE would never
politicize things
for his own best
interest.
only politicians
do that, and
he isn't one.
HE is for
the working man.

-

please, tiny, sweet baby jesus
with tiny jesus hands
help me.

-

it’s not hypocritical
at all for
him to constantly
talk about how awful it is
that jobs are
going overseas,
even though he
does THAT EXACT THING
with his own companies.

jesus, guys.
obviously he's just SMART.
(really? is that the word
we want to use? is that the
word we use to describe other
business owners who do
the same thing? uh, no, it's not.
i'm pretty sure they are
compared to criminals,
and labeled unpatriotic.)

because if you
believe something passionately,
like you claim to,
like american goods should
be created and manufactured
in this country,
and you are a billionaire,
with vast resources,
that owns businesses,
employs people in this country,
and you love your country
and all it's people,
and you have a sense of
right and wrong,
you don't cheat.
you don't take advantage.
other businesses do it the right way
why can't you?
that's what IT ******* MEANS
to have principles.

he is an opportunist.
he takes.
see the difference?

-

when she
calls your supporters
a bad, bad thing
(a basket of deplorables?)
she is a
disgusting,
unpresidential,
elitist
***** that
can never
be forgiven.

he would never,
EVER even
think about
calling anyone names.
never ever.
(i seriously don't have
the time in my life
to even attempt to list all
the examples.) although
the new york times
did a pretty decent job.

but you do recognize sarcasm, yes?

-

jesus,
people shouldn’t get
so friggen offended
all the time!
he says.
being
politically correct
is stupid.
it’s better
to be honest, like him.
(except he's not honest)
he just says ALL
THE THINGS
we are ALL thinking
but don't have
the ***** to say.
(um...really? you can
count me out of
that particular
generalization.)

-

he is not weak,
or a coward,
or a liar,
or corrupt,
everyone
else
is.


he would never
get offended
by an snl skit
and cry like a baby
about it,
because that's absurd.

or claim
that literally everything
is unfair,
because that sounds
like a whining child.
(which his wife
compared him to).

-

when someone
accused him of rigging
a pageant,
he sued them.
because "proclaiming
fraud is serious."
the accuser is clearly
just a loser. a bad loser.
(that's what he said).
OBVIOUSLY this
does not apply
when HE
claims elections
are rigged.

also, he doesn’t care
that the GOP Primary
was rigged,
(whoops, did you
forget that was
rigged too?)
because he won.
(yep, he said that too.)

-

i see patterns here.
(i learned about patterns
in kindergarten.)

-

he spends
campaign funds
on his personal
businesses.
(we don't care)

sued
for unpaid taxes,
discrimination,
****** assault,
fraud,
ripping
people off.
(again, we don't care. actually,
all these things are
probably just
further proof of his
very level-headed,
thoughtful, and
superior intellect.)

bankruptcies,
failed businesses,
using charitable donations
to benefit himself,
(while viewed as bad
things for all other
human beings, are
actually strengths of his.
because up is down.
and quite frankly,
we.
don't.
care.)

has sued literally
thousands of times.
(i thought people
who sued all the
time were jerks?)
welp,
not him.

-

when other people
settle lawsuits
that is an
admission of guilt.
(yep, he said that)
(so did his campaign manager)

when he does it
OBVIOUSLY the
opposite is true.

and he's done it MANY times.

-

he mocked someone
with a disability.
it's on record.

-

he mocked someone
who is deaf.
it's on record.

-

he has made
disparaging remarks
about the military.
it's on record.

he incites and
encourages
violence.
again, on record.

i'm gonna go ahead and say,
not so much
into the brown people?
or the gay people.
or the woman people?
or the poor people.
or the fat people.
or the refugee people.
or the science people.
or military people.
or government people.
or journalist people
oh yeah, or education people.
or people that disagree with him.
or stupid people who pay their taxes.

but like, totally into
everyone else,
like
white, male people.
that agree with him.
that are into violence.
and are rich.
and cheat the system.

he maybe sorta kinda
(ok, just flat out said it)
hinted at using the
second amendment
to **** his opponent.
on record.
god, you guys, seriously,
learn to take a joke.
because murdering your
political opponent is super funny.
i mean, it's fun, right?
it's especially funny in those
other countries. and for the murdered people.
it's not like kids are listening.
or like there are any crazy card carrying
white *** people
that think that might be a good idea.
gosh, get a grip.

said he could
shoot someone
in broad daylight and
wouldn't lose votes.
for realz? yes, for realz!

having one standard
for yourself
and the opposite standard
for everyone else
is dare i say,
the very definition of
i n e q u a l i t y.

if you think
you are
superior,
then just say so.
own that ****.

if you desire violence,
proclaim it.

if you desire inequality,
then shout it
from the rooftops.

if you think one
group should get richer
while others get poorer,
say it. support it.

if you think
women have no
value other
than the size
of their *******
and their *****,
by all means,
let us know!

because that's what he would do.
that's what he does.

don't hide behind
this excuse
of a man.

don't paint
yourself a
patriot,

regurgitate
outright lies
without doing
any research,

and don't think you
speak for
all of us.

because you don't.

pretending something is real
does not make it real.

i’m getting
tired of this.

hypocrisy
is gross.
oh, i'll just keep updating this ****, you can count on that.
just for funzies: https://www.facebook.com/OccupyDemocrats/videos/1206887309404321/
WHEN the sea is everywhere
from horizon to horizon ..
  when the salt and blue
  fill a circle of horizons ..
I swear again how I know
the sea is older than anything else
and the sea younger than anything else.
  
My first father was a landsman.
My tenth father was a sea-lover,
  a gipsy sea-boy, a singer of chanties.
  (Oh Blow the Man Down!)
  
The sea is always the same:
and yet the sea always changes.
  
  The sea gives all,
  and yet the sea keeps something back.
  
The sea takes without asking.
The sea is a worker, a thief and a loafer.
  Why does the sea let go so slow?
  Or never let go at all?
  
  The sea always the same
  day after day,
  the sea always the same
  night after night,
  fog on fog and never a star,
  wind on wind and running white sheets,
  bird on bird always a sea-bird-
  so the days get lost:
  it is neither Saturday nor Monday,
  it is any day or no day,
  it is a year, ten years.
  
  Fog on fog and never a star,
  what is a man, a child, a woman,
  to the green and grinding sea?
The ropes and boards squeak and groan.
  
On the land they know a child they have named Today.
On the sea they know three children they have named:
  Yesterday, Today, To-morrow.
  
I made a song to a woman:-it ran:
  I have wanted you.
  I have called to you
  on a day I counted a thousand years.
  
In the deep of a sea-blue noon
many women run in a man's head,
phantom women leaping from a man's forehead
  .. to the railings ... into the sea ... to the
  sea rim ...
  .. a man's mother ... a man's wife ... other
  women ...
  
I asked a sure-footed sailor how and he said:
  I have known many women but there is only one sea.
I saw the North Star once
and our old friend, The Big Dipper,
  only the sea between us:
  "Take away the sea
  and I lift The Dipper,
  swing the handle of it,
  drink from the brim of it."
  
I saw the North Star one night
and five new stars for me in the rigging ropes,
and seven old stars in the cross of the wireless
  plunging by night,
  plowing by night-
Five new cool stars, seven old warm stars.
  
I have been let down in a thousand graves by my kinfolk.
I have been left alone with the sea and the sea's wife, the wind, for my last friends
And my kinfolk never knew anything about it at all.
  
Salt from an old work of eating our graveclothes is here.
  The sea-kin of my thousand graves,
  The sea and the sea's wife, the wind,
They are all here to-night
    between the circle of horizons,
    between the cross of the wireless
    and the seven old warm stars.
  
Out of a thousand sea-holes I came yesterday.
Out of a thousand sea-holes I come to-morrow.
  
I am kin of the changer.
  I am a son of the sea
  and the sea's wife, the wind.
Marshal Gebbie Nov 2010
Hidden in the grey morass out there amidst your workforce
Are Pearls in a lattice work of intricate disguise.
Gems of enlightenment and soldiers of conscience
Who battle with adversities’ regressive, shut eyes.

Clad in the rigging of everyday costume
Hidden to all but the discerning few,
Seeing the gold of the extra steps taken,
And observing initiatives made there for you.

Gold in the form of an everyday worker
One who excels far above average way,
Unrewarded and unacknowledged
Responsibly shouldering this all in his day.

Towering over the mass mediocrity
Holding the strands of a mess of loose ends,
Always dependable, doggedly purposeful
Easily marked as definitive friend.

Driven by his own hard volition
In striving for that extra won mile,
True champion of mans’ Endeavour
Unheralded in his own low profile.

The movers and the shakers all
Fly their flags of self acclaim
But the Pearls of the Unobvious
Shall be this nations’ future fame.


Marshalg
Victoria Park Tunnel
24 November 2010
Heather Horner Dec 2023
He captains the ship
with a grin
You’re all in
Hoist the sail
Climb the rigging
Settle down in the cabin
Close that door in behind,
You want to go live in
His life, your life, his wife
You say

He scoffs at the crew
But not you
You’re the maiden
He’ll find treasure to hide
In you he’ll confide
And provide
The answers you desired
He knows best
You say

When seas are rough
And he’s had enough
Surrounding ships wreck
All are affected
Once important neglected
It can’t go undetected, surely,
As he undresses you
with his insults
Addresses all your faults
He’s just stressed
You say.

Your attempts to rekindle
Throw you overboard
His words
undercurrents,
that drag you beneath.
Used to swim
Now amongst the weeds
Can’t help but concede
He needs me
You say

You struggle
You had learnt to blow bubbles
But now you’re in trouble
A muddle
Confuddled
That’s typical for you
He says

You plead to be rescued
Lock eyes with the crew
But they’re through
So washed ashore
Bedraggled and torn
He picks you up
Keeps you safe,
Loved
And warm
You say
Feedback welcome! Been playing around with this one and know it needs a little work. Thanks 😊
Rob Rutledge Jun 2014
An eclipse at the end of the world,
Waterfalls unto the unknown,
Navigate the secrets,
Nautical bold.
Here be dragons, or so we're told.
Well then let us burn,
Charred soul.
Not all that shines is gold.
Hold close the rigging
Friction scars our hands once more.
Voyage to unknown lands
Our future lies in the sand.
Both fine yet blown off course.
My hand.
My sweet hand, its long fingers, hold out for you. It feels for you, to guide you through this storm. I can feel you, just out of reach, your arms are turned away from me, crossed to protect you, shielding the darkness within from escaping, as if pushing back the rise of a storm, that your heart, can no longer contain.
There is a storm coming.
I can see it in your eyes, as they look behind me, unable to see me, unable to see, me. As if my very visage is a reminder that you can no longer be alone, as if my very eyes tell you that you are here with me, and all, will be, ok. And your very eyes, and your very chest and your very shoulders, they seem to die a thousand deaths before me, exuding defeat and terror and defense, and relief, all at the same time.
I. cannot. reach. you.
Hold. out. your. hand. My. Love.
You sit, you stand, you walk away, you ignore my hand. You want to do this alone. Alone, without me. With me, alone. But my heart beats only for you, you can hear the sound distantly, from the pulse inmy wrist by my hand, and it widens your eyes and stirs you. And, I can see, the very depths of your soul in each breath you release. In every expletive you throw at me, for being here, for making you realise that, I am not, her. I am not, her. I am not, them. Your soul, it unleashes hell, fire, ash and a deep darkness you cannot bear.
My love. My sweet sweet love. Hear me:
I am safety, i wear an orange vest and headlamp. I am clear skies, and sunshine. I am a long open road to nowhere. I am teenage butterflies. I am the chest with the ******* that you will lie your head on during the night and find security. I am the shore after the wreck. I am freedom, beauty, passion, laughter and forever after. I am shelter, with blankets. I am the fullness of your void. I am the full stop to the end of your questions.
There is a storm coming.
You have tied yourself to the rigging. You are stood ready for the hurracaine. You glance briefly at me, and in your eyes is a child that is lost, that is lost, that is longing, that is hollow and alone, and does.not.understand. Why?
There is a storm coming.
The dam in your heart broke and the arteries flood your brain with, life, fear, and belief.
Take my hand, my love. I will be here. I will  not be, moved.
I am, a rock, to cling to. I am a storm shelter. I am a end to your beginning.
I will not leave. I will not go.  I be here in the fall, the ruin, the despise, the bitterness, the anger, the rejection, and the destruction. I will be here, with my arm, hung out to dry amongst the linen and the memories you drew on them to protect yourself from me.
My hand, it can hold your world. My hand can protect you. My hand, we can conquer the world, my love. My hand is yours, my hand is yours, my hand, is, yours.
Take it.
Fall to your knees, place my hand on your face as you weep the storm in to my world, and release the whole hurracaine within you. I will take that storm and absolve it from itself.
My hand, your cheek
My pulse, your heart.
My love.
Take my hand, release your storm.

*(now read again, whilst listening to this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uffjii1hXzU&feature;=share&list;=AL94UKMTqg-9Ay9pKcP7K4WLmlE_GjKuqE)
As my illogic breaks, I'll robot make
to be this soul's chamber,
robbing a piecemeal joy from misfit toys
tossed out for fine tuning

by toddlers cheery mad to gorge on fads.
I'll take their T-Rex head,
with droopy lids that wink as if to drink
the world's wide-shallow stares,

plug its plastic prongs in torso of tin
while twin squeeze-box arms splay
to tie magnetic bows round pads below
gold, plush lion cub's legs.

This moppet of mixed breeds I'll learned feed
with animate cunning
to be ruled by charmed laws that give it pause
when whole-sum circumstance

tangles fuzzy circuits. Then a circus-
wire's unbalancing act
I'll paste from templed flesh to doll enmeshed
by transfuse rigging,

and as coil comes to slough, just as I'm off,
I'll flip that gilded switch,
implanting my spirit into a bit
of copper-hued country.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
a brace of wind blew
across the rocky cove
where the hull of a cargo ship lay
twas caught in a torrid tumultuous sea
as it sailed to the port town of Dalmont
strong gales
lashed the deck
and broke the rigging
such disaster
befell the crew
all perished
on that moonless night
with ferocity the elements
did conspire against
the ship and its hapless occupants
no news of where the ship lay
came until 1935
a coastal surveying team
spotted the wreck
a mile out to sea
the ghostly skeletal hull
sat askew on a rock ledge
in a small dingy
they rowed
toward the shore
to make inquiry of the ship's remains
the only object
they found
twas
a twisted navigator's sextant
Martin Narrod Oct 2015
I'm heaving prose at you and you don't even know it. Like fish jumping into a boat that's empty. Having risen before, being brave would seem easier, lighter maybe. Like great fluff or a fugue of an earthy red wine. My tear ducts are hollow drums, if I could I'd give you a metaphor about weeping, but I'm wept out and worn out. I'm not tired or worn down. I'm an obelisk, or a saber perhaps. I'm good coffee from a specialty roaster, but I come in a to go cup. Coffee should never be consumed from a to go cup.

You're one of those pennies people pay one dollar and one cent for, stretched out with new print on them. At the zoo they can be bought. At places where the middle class can be classless they can be bought.

You were once a starlet. A golden and imperfect deity. I'm still worshipping you. You're my startling ******, but the rigging is busted. Now I'm onto acid washes and back on ivory. Maybe you didn't mean to leave cue cards and question marks like keepsake memories under our bedroom duvet.

I'm only asking for you.

While I **** around each new city in the jargon of a Calder sculpture. I've punched door mice and killed rattle snakes with the heel of my foot. Step on with the right and bring your fingers to your lips. I've been calling good luck for decades now. Julys Septembers and Novembers too.

Just a regular guy with a big ******* rooster.

Some girl said we're swimming for each other in the dark, but I know your eyes have adjusted to the light. Don't compensate for ordinary experiences. Realize what I realize and taste the snow.
Thomas W Case Sep 2021
(Graphic erotica 18 or older)
Set me free --
I’ve been waiting for you to,
These nights in the castle                    
You’re too distant.                                
It’s too easy.
I’m afraid to tell you                                          
what I’ll allow -- what I crave.                                    
We read,
We talk -- I sing for you.
I love you, even.
But you’re holding back,
I don’t know why.
My family is gone,
No one is coming for me.
I’m afraid only to tell you --
There’s more to me --
Wildness, wretchedness, and pain without end.
I'm not afraid of the darkness,
From it, together we have everything
To gain.

I’m caged as well, I want to break out,
Eat raw meat, and breathe
In all life has to offer.
Pain has defined me.
The bars are strong on
Your cage and I see your
pain...I want to touch
It, and make it go away.
**** it far away,
Mine as well, does love even exist?
My childhood was a horror show of
Apathy, money, and privilege;
But no smiles or touch.
Debauchery surrounded me,
People were to be used for our
Base desires.
I will punish us both for being born.

Maybe you want a simple girl
Extravagant dinners and clean laundry
Such things bore me, I’m afraid
You might think me monstrous
All I’ve done is toil away,
Giving myself over to Sisyphean labors, and
Endless inhuman favors
Surrendered to unfit Masters
Who paid for their titles, treating
Me like a commodity to use up,
Beat down, and throw away. I
Indict my own male relatives
Who should have protected me,
And beseech God for a remedy
To my loneliness and misery.
My gratitude overwhelms
For this interlude in the castle.
You’ve been good to me so far —
Your care is starting to show, yet I
Am electric at a dream I have of
How much further we could go, still
You seem reluctant, what must I do...

I need a monster in that
Bed, but not in my heart.                      
I want to ******* hard                          
And drive the                                                  
Demons out,                                                             ­                 
Drowned in the pink.
Pound it dripping home
To the core of the tulips,
To the bottom of the
Swollen rose.
Love is a rotten pig
In the dung heap of life.
I want no part of
It ever again.

I see you looking at me
With a different energy      
it scares me in the exact way                      
I want to be.
The day stretches long,
With an endless banal sun.
I’m molten inside --
Tropical, with inhibitions
Melting down.
You can save me
Right now,
As I kneel in front of you,
I open my mouth, and
Feel the cage
Door opening.

Freedom,
As you take my ****
Into your mouth --
Do you feel the heat, and
The power?

I feel it all at once,
Like a conquistador
But benevolent.
I keep my eyes open,
The world blooms
From simple
To magnificent.
I’m not like
The other maids,
I’m not sure if you knew.
I do everything
Oh so happily
Like it’s forever new.  
******* being
My favorite feast, so
Please! Pull my hair!
Don’t be gentle!
Make me drink it.

You ***** ****.
I’m taken to new
Heights with this
Different side of you.
My precious darling,
Take all of me, as I ****
your mouth.
I feel like the Marquis De
Sade seducing the
Chambermaid.
Let me taste
Your juice.
Lie back and
Spread your legs.
Your ***** is divine.
Like ambrosia, your
Swollen **** begs for
My tongue,
Do you feel the edge of
Death as I close my hand
Around your throat?
*** my sweet angel.
*** Venus, ***.

I’m relieved
You’re pleased
With my new attitude.
Yet on the edge of release,
A hint of boredom creeps in --
Will it always be this easy
To ****** my Master?
Is it over already?  
I need something darker - more fantastical              
A slight dreariness creeps in                        
As I feel my ****** coming,                                                          ­  
But just before it breaks
So does the boredom!
I realize my heart is pounding
I’m struggling to breathe --
You’re choking me!
Holding me down with one arm,
I try to struggle and squeal,
Electricity of fear!
But I’m immobilized, dumbfounded
Kind sir, please!
Not like this!
You said you loved me!
I loathe to leave
That hot mouth on me
But you look up and break your grip,
So I sit up, renounce your deliverance
And flee!

Where have you gone
My dark angel,
My Babylonian imp?
Are you afraid?
It’s just a little death,
So you value                                      
Life more.                                            
I will find you, and when                                          
I do, My *** will swim in your
Veins, it will be your
Food and Oxygen, our
*** will be your new melody,
The rhythm by which you walk and
Move through life.
Come out my Nymph,
Come to your new Master.

From my hiding place
I see
A vision of Beauty
Your eyes smiling
Back at me
You see me — Truly.  
You read my mind even!
How rash my fear!
After all I desired
The moment is here!
I’m ready, it’s real,
I want to show you what I’m made of
So I step out and bow my head
Revealing my submission
No more mercy - please
Take me and my
Weak knees
Oh! My darling sir!
Take me all the way, please!

I gaze at your tremendous light
And passion. Your heart beats like a
Deer after the chase.
I can smell your musty ****
From the *** you want
So I signal the chambermaid
And the gardener to
Seize you, ah, and then,
While he forces your legs apart
I tie your wrists over your head
You won't be escaping again!
You naughty *****!
I have you now!
While he leers hungrily
Up your skirts
I take my knife and slit your dress --
So close to your throat
And all the way down the corset
I signal to the gardener and the
Brute tears it off you
Leaving you bleeding
As his rough hands scratch your flesh
We all look at you trembling,
Flushed, drawn out, and naked --
That's when the chambermaid
Pulls a long feather from her apron
And runs it over your eyebrows.
Then around your mouth, open in fear.
While the Gardener looks at me hopefully.
I nod, so he takes his big dumb hands
And squeezes your ******* hard
Moaning like a feral dog.
Failing to look at his Master again
He slips his night shirt off
Leans forward and shoves
A hard **** in your open mouth
Growling "**** on it, you filthy ****!"
With utter, savage delight.
You take the head of it in your mouth
Whimpering, yet ******* it tightly.
He moans louder, thrusting violently,
With sweat from his forehead
Dripping on your face as
You look to me for mercy.
You find none, so he takes license
And ***** your mouth so hard
Writhing his hips, as your poor lips
Begin to bruise and your throat is sore
The maid gets down
Between your legs and
Licks your swollen ****,
Your hips rise to the
Darting of her tongue.
She slips a finger in
Your tight *****, so juicy
And ***** it hard and fast
As she ***** your ****.
You lie back, letting yourself
Be taken and consumed.

What have I done,
I’m helpless now!
You’ve gone very much too far!
The fear is as delicious as
That mouth on me —
Yet I'm pinned and immobile.
The Brute’s **** is strangling me,
Even as I begin to revel in the taste
Of his lust, I can’t breathe!
I wanted you, not these brutes!
You stand far off - aloof and I’m
Crying as I explode
The brute laughs and then
Grunts and moans as he
Lets forth his sickening load.
I’m forced to swallow, he won’t get up
Instead he’s twisting and shoving
His pulsing **** on my tongue,
Barking "drink it, ****!" and laughing
As he drives his ****** home.

The ambivalence is driving me
Mad, I can’t stand to watch this brute
Handle you this way, yet there is a
Strange sense of pleasure.
Love is changing me, I see you
As a poor wretch that craves
Love, I also need love,
And this brute didn’t ask permission!
I make my decision quickly.
I pull my rigging knife from
Its sheath and walk behind
The filthy *******, grab his greasy                      
Hair and slice his jugular, as his                                
Heart pumps its last beats, blood                                    
Spurts all over your *** and back.
I have finally met my match —
I grab your hair and pull you back to
Meet my raging hard ****.
The ***** has made your ***** sloppy wet
And I slap your **** with my shaft.

So I was right to be afraid! But I know
You love me truly
You’d never hurt me - would you?
The chambermaid runs out and it’s just
You and me - ******* wild and free.
Suddenly you slow yourself
And cradle me so tenderly.
Your face in my hair, you pull me close,
Then everything goes slow.
You hold me a long moment
But then your energy
Is ferocious all over again —
You ****** into me harder
It hurts me and I cry out —
"I’m yours forever!
Even if I die!”

If you die my darling, I die as well,
My love for you transcends the ***.
I weep as we come together,
Ecstasy, rapture,
I’ve passed your ******,
I’m in your soul.
And you in mine.
I know we should flee,
But I need a few moments more
Inside of you, looking
Into your safe eyes.
Footsteps approach, like the
Black horse of destiny.
A wretched voice calls out --
“He’s the one!”

With agony in my heart
I realize it's too late
You captured my soul while
Death stood at the gate.
Despondent, I release you,
Desperate, I rise up.
Naked and ******,
My Glory shining through
"Gentlemen!" I cry, with anguish in my voice
"I lit the flame myself!
I carried the brutal torch!
I kneeled before my Beloved
To worship his throbbing ****
You mustn't judge me, sirs!
A simple maid I am not!
I stirred him to untamed lust
Gave into delicious
Humiliation -- splayed out for
The household to see
My unbridled flirtations,
We played with death!
I led him on!
I wanted Love more than Life!
If you must hang him,
Hang me as well
For Death must need a Wife!

She knows not what she says.
We are drunk on love.
I did the crime, a brute kills a brute.
Nothing more. I’m your man, take me,
And leave my poor angel alone.
I would die for her,
But I’d rather live,
So here is your chance to
Holster your weapons and go
Home to your families.
No, you say?
Then I shall send you
To hell.
Join all the rest of the brutes
Gentlemen, and
Join me as well.

The man rushes the authorities,
And a shot rings out.
His new heart is fatally
Shattered this time,
He drops with a thud to the floor.
She wails and runs to him.
She kneels and clutches him to
Her breast, weeping,
You can’t die,
I love you,
She whispers.
I love you too, my angel,
Now go and love some more.
These are his last words, and a
Smile lies dead on his
Pallid face.

She screams at the apathetic soldiers,
You took my soul and my life!
It is you that deserve to die!
And now -- this very night!
The breath is leaving my body,
I long for obliteration
Life is now impossible
An ugly abomination
I cannot bear his last words,
Go and love some more, he said!
Ah, but my passion has turned murderous
Now that Love itself lies dead!
Reaching out one last time
It appears, for her lover’s hand
She quickly took the knife from him
Turned, and charged the men.
Her glorious warrior’s cry, and
Her unashamed nakedness,
Aroused anger in the soldiers
With their predictable expectations
In the final ****** their guns convulsed,
Delivering her with a volley of bullets
Into her waiting lover’s arms,
Their blood flowing together
In rich, loving rivulets  
Of passionate dark red
Flowing together, briefly
Warming the concrete floor.
This is an ****** bedtime story for all you lovers out there.  It is written by Thomas W. Case and biche
2ndBest Jan 2015
SOS
Whiskey works in waves
I saw something hazy, a light
Making it's way down to the shoreline
I followed and took two more shots
Along the lakeside
One was to warm me up
And the other to make me believe
I couldn't drown in anything
Besides a body of water
Yet even with my feet
Firmly planted on the beach
My arms flailed above me
I coughed up seaweed
And my flooded lungs
Began to sing a broken chantey
"Take down the mast, o!
Tear down the rigging!
Tell me! Tell me!
What is a life worth living?"
Thomas McEnaney Mar 2012
Each knot tied
wrinkles and ages the face
of a rope worn smooth
from passing through the hands of you and I.

Each slipknot I pull through
weakens the twists in your story,
because these knots are little more than child’s play,
and children have no place among this rigging.

What is frayed and tangled,
this salty air will only weaken in due time.
And when the strings unravel,
face the shame for knots you can’t untie.

Though the salt air blew upon my rope as well,
no harm can come from knots that I’ve untied.
Will you have the strength to face yourself,
when all that you have left is knotted ropes?
This is old, but i shall post it anyway

— The End —